HR pros seem to have hard feelings about “soft skills.” Soft skills are generally understood to encompass non-technical, interpersonal job skills, including communication, critical thinking, and collaboration competencies. HR leaders say these capabilities are more important than ever as technological changes like AI or remote work reshape how jobs are performed. But it’s hard to miss that HR leaders seldom actually say the words “soft skills.” In fact, some want the people profession to stop using the term altogether. In recent years, interest in the term has skyrocketed, driven in part by the Covid-19 pandemic, when the corporate world quickly adopted remote work and suddenly the only human-to-human interactions were happening over Zoom. Leaders worried that workers, Gen Zers in particular, weren’t developing interpersonal competencies because they were missing out on social learning that occurs naturally in-person. For more on whether the “soft skills” term has gone out of style, keep reading here.—PM | 
