Many employers find that their new employees lack sufficient interpersonal skills such as lack of ability to work with colleagues as a team. What are the causes? Can you suggest some possible solutions?

Many important factors are believed to exactly measure one’s career success, one of which is interpersonal skills. However, there is a serious lack or even complete absence of such skills found in newly employed staff today. While this matter is caused by some noticeable reasons, it can be mitigated through possible solutions. The new employees’ inability to communicate with other people in a working environment different from their previous ones lies in two primary reasons. First, the fact that enhancing academic knowledge is always considered a priority has led most universities to neglect/turn a blind eye to the importance of teaching students to gain other skills, especially communication, which are necessary for their future lives. As a consequence, the incapability of communication easily hinders graduates from working their way up in a company. Second, for those who possess overwhelming intrapersonal skills, they have a strong tendency to avoid conflicts that occur among colleagues. For this very reason, they usually prefer working on their own to deal with most assigned tasks rather than cooperating with someone, which thus renders their interpersonal skills worse by time. Albeit the lack of communication skills is an alarming matter for a majority of companies, some possible measures can be suggested so as to help fresh employees build new relationships. One of the most common solutions is to encourage managers to organize regular events which aim to create a bond between new faces and old ones. These should be held within the company and they can be from a sports competition to something closely related to the culture of that company. For example, a singing contest will both discover hidden talents and put everyone in close connection. Another way is that schools and universities had better balance the amount of theoretical and empirical knowledge so that once embarking on a career path, students will survive as growing employees rather than suffering ones. In conclusion, reduced interpersonal skills may prevent any employee from achieving success in a new organization. However, companies should create more chances of communication through extracurricular activities and schools should prioritize teaching practical knowledge.