In the world of business skills training, employees' skills can be generally divided into two main categories: hard skills and soft skills. For organization to wax stronger and competitive in the business environment today, employees need to possess soft skills in addition to hard skills. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to examine the direct influence of both training methodology and trainers' effectiveness on soft skills acquisition, followed by identifying soft skill competencies and their influence on employees' work performance. The study was designed to use a survey research method in studying the effects of soft skills on employee work performance. The units of analysis were the selected managers and executives of a few Malaysian-based companies. Random sampling procedures were carried out in 10 different Malaysian companies, which consisted of about 1200 soft skills trainees, from which 260 participants were selected. The findings revealed that the model of trainer effectiveness and training methodology factors have provided a reasonable explanation for the influence of soft skill acquisition which is the latent variables. The model also revealed that soft skill acquisition positively influenced employees' work performance. The authors recommend need for employers to restructure the methodology for training employees on soft-skills. It is also recommend that, corporate institutions need to adopt ‘time-spaced learning’ training method in order to circumvent the hindrances associated with training transfer.
