https://e-journal.naureendigition.com/index.
php/mj
Vol.1, No.1, 2023, Hal. 36–46
E-ISSN : 2964-7606
EFFECT OF HARDSKILL AND SOFTSKILL ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
Umban Adi Jaya1 Toni Maryanto2
[email protected],
[email protected] Manajemen, Institut Manajemen Wiyata Indonesia, Sukabumi
Abstract Career development is the company's obligation to fulfill employee rights. So that
employee commitment arises in the work process. Effective career development will
result in job satisfaction and the form of reciprocity will make maximum efforts with all
the abilities it has to complete its work tasks. Human Resources are important assets and
act as the main driving factor in the implementation of all agency activities or activities,
so they must be managed properly in terms of empowerment and capacity building. This
research was conducted to collect readings and find out what are the effects of hard skills
and soft skills on employee performance. This study uses the SLR (Systematic Literature
Review) method. SLR is a research approach that involves the identification, evaluation,
and interpretation of all relevant research results to answer a particular research
question, theme, or phenomenon of relevance. Based on the results of 10 journals that
researchers found, it is important for companies to increase empowerment, hard skills,
and soft skills in an effort to improve employee performance. Employees must be more
empowered in ways such as providing job delegation, talent coaching, education and
development, so that each employee can be more empowered and develop.
Keywords: Hardskill, Softskill, Employee Performance
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PRELIMINARY
Humans are creatures who have the privilege of the ability to think. Humans are different
from other creatures in terms of life and the natural functions attached to them. Thus, humans
have a duty to use their minds and abilities to meet the needs that exist in this world. Human
Resources is the holder of the most important role in a unit. HR is an important asset and plays a
role as the main driving factor in the implementation of all agency activities or activities, so they
must be managed properly in terms of empowerment and capacity building. One thing that can be
done as human resource empowerment is to carry out general management which includes
aspects of planning, organizing, directing and controlling.
Empowerment of human resources as employees is a strategy so that the image of the
organization in the eyes of consumers becomes good because it is related to consumer trust and
satisfaction. Learning from a constantly changing environment is certainly a lot of considerations
for organizations to pay attention to what is the key to increasing work productivity which will
have an impact on the organization's image (Ratnasari, 2020). Companies need the empowerment
of human resources in order to be able to create a balance between the goals, objectives and
activities of various parties. In addition, it is also needed to achieve work efficiency and
productivity. Without a workforce, the company's goals cannot be achieved. Therefore, it is very
important to empower human resources from the start, such as since the human resource
recruitment process. So the overall goal of human resource management is to improve the
productive contribution of people or workers to the organization or company by being
strategically, ethically and socially responsible for their work.
What employees need to have in an organization that sets a minimum cumulative
achievement index is to measure the employee's ability based on ability in science and mastery in
terms of technology, which is more academic. The reason is that the organization wants to ensure
that its prospective employees have the ability with the expected standards so that employees are
able to adapt to changes that often occur in the external and internal environment of the
organization. The uniqueness of this human resource asset requires management that is different
from other assets, because these assets have thoughts, feelings, behaviors, so that if managed
properly they can actively contribute to the progress of the organization. In other words,
organizations must be increasingly selective in determining who and how to do the work.
The professionalism of employees in using their abilities is a form of responsibility for the
success of this development program. Broadly speaking, career development is the company's
obligation to fulfill employee rights. So that employee commitment arises in the work process.
Effective career development will result in job satisfaction and the form of reciprocity will make
maximum efforts with all the abilities it has to complete its work tasks. Thus the productivity and
work results of employees will increase optimally. Individuals who are satisfied with their work
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will be motivated to do better work. A person with a high level of work productivity shows a
positive attitude towards his work. Satisfied employees will be more pro to the company, think
positively,
Soft skills in the reality of developments in the world of work, rapid developments in the
field of science and technology have encouraged organizations to apply, utilize, and manage
knowledge and advances in technology for organizational developers. Along with these
developments, the work carried out by the workforce is getting heavier. It takes a workforce who
has a unique ability and skill specification, which distinguishes it from workers who work in
competing organizations. The simplest form of implementing soft skills is a person's ability to
motivate himself and use his initiative, namely having an understanding of what is needed to be
done and can be done well, useful for overcoming small problems that arise suddenly and can
continue to survive if the problem has not been resolved. Although soft skills are characteristics
that are inherent in a person and need hard work to change them, soft skills are not something
that is stagnant, these abilities can be optimized by training and honed with work experience.
Furthermore, hard skills are often interpreted as determining the size of an individual in
terms of technical ability which can be seen from the evidence he has, such as certificates, awards
and others. This means that Hard Skills are obtained by someone through educational institutions
to obtain abilities that support them in solving problems. Many organizations or companies that
set the Hardskill criteria as a measure of the ability or description of the quality of employee
performance possessed by the organization or company to its consumers, with the aim of
consumers giving a positive view of the organization, that employees are considered to meet the
quality that should be. This means that the organization or company wants to show that the
performance of its employees has the ability in knowledge and technology, and able to respond to
an ever-changing environment. Hard skills (technical skills) are indeed important in a job. But if
you don't have good soft skills, it's no wonder that after decades of working someone's
achievements have not increased. Very different from those who have good soft skills, their
achievements are little by little and continue to reach higher levels.
The importance of having hard skills as mastery of science, technology, and technical skills
related to the field of science. The simplest thing in hard skills is having technical skills that are
inherent or needed for a particular profession. As employees who are committed to progress, they
must have balanced abilities and skills.
Based on some of the interests above, the researchers conducted a review review to
determine the effect of hard skills and soft skills on employee performance.
Hard skills
Hard skills are technical knowledge and abilities possessed by someone, Technical
knowledge which includes knowledge about the design and features of the product, developing it
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according to technology, being able to overcome problems that occur and analyze product uses in
an effort to identify new ideas about products or services. these services (Rasid, 2018). Hard Skill
is the ability to master science and technology and technical skills in developing Intelligence
Quotient (IQ) related to their field. This technical knowledge includes the knowledge needed for a
particular profession and its development in accordance with the technology used must also be
able to overcome problems that occur and be able to analyze them. Hard skills describe behaviors
and skills that can be seen by the eye. Hard Skills can be assessed from the Technical test or
Practical Test. Elements of Hardskill can be seen from Intelligence Quotion Thinking which has
indicators of the ability to calculate, analyze, design, insight and broad knowledge. Hard skills have
a very important role to be developed, the purpose of this role is that someone will do a job
properly and correctly according to the hard skills he has.
Soft skills
Soft skills are a person's skills in dealing with other people (interpersonal skills) and self-
regulation skills (intra personal skills) that are able to develop to work optimally. Soft skills is a
social or sociological term to indicate a person's level of EQ, which consists of a group of
personality traits, accepted by society, communication, language, a person's habits, friendliness,
and optimism that characterize relationships with others. Soft skills are a complement to one's
hard skills, skills and life skills, both with oneself, in groups or in society as well as with the
Creator. Broadly speaking, soft skills are a combination of intrapersonal and interpersonal skills,
Wahyuni (2016).
Soft skills are a person's skills in dealing with others and self-regulation skills that are able
to develop to work optimally. The concept of Softskill is actually a development of a concept that
has been known as emotional intelligence. Broadly speaking, soft skills can be classified into two
categories, namely intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. Intrapersonal skills include: self-
awareness (self-confidence, self-assessment, traits & preferences, emotional awareness) and self-
skills (improvement, self-control, trustworthiness, time management, proactive, conscientious).
While interpersonal skills include social awareness (political awareness, developing others,
utilizing diversity, service orientation, empathy and social skills (leadership).
Employee performance
Performance in general is related to the results of one's work that has been done, both with
regard to quality, the number of results of work and the timeliness of completing the work.
Employee performance appraisals are based on traits, behaviors, and results. Traits related to the
characteristics of employees, loyalty to the organization, perseverance, good at making
friends/cooperating or often referred to as soft skills. Performance is a combination of values from
the daily behavior of employees that contribute to the achievement of the vision, mission and goals
of the organization/company. that if an organization/company cannot assess or measure the
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performance of its employees, the management of the organization/company cannot run
properly.
Performance is a function of motivation and ability, to complete tasks and work a person
should have a certain degree of willingness and level of ability. A person's willingness and skills
are not effective enough to do something without a clear understanding of what to do and how to
do it. Employee performance is a very important thing in the company's efforts to achieve its goals.
Organizational performance is largely determined by the performance of individuals, in
organizational performance the achievement of results lies at the level or organizational unit, so
that it includes all elements in the organization, one of which is an individual or individual.
RESEARCH METHODS
This study uses the SLR (Systematic Literature Review) method. SLR is a research approach
that involves identifying, evaluating, and interpreting all relevant research results in order to
answer a particular research question, theme, or phenomenon of relevance. SLR in Indonesian is
a systematic literature review which is a literature review method that interprets the findings on
a research topic to answer research questions that have been set by the researcher. To assist
researchers in finding discussions from previous studies, researchers searched for 10 previous
studies that were relevant to the problems that the researchers formulated.
Based on the results of the exploration of previous research, the researchers found relevant
results related to the hard skills and soft skills possessed by employees as supporting professional
performance. From these results, the researcher provides a description to explain further from
the researcher's perspective. The explanation is also intended to find a little difference between
the current research and previous research.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Journals That Meet the Assessment Criteria
1. Marya Mujayana (2020) Effect of Hardskills and Softskills on Employee Performance
(Quantitative with Hypotheses) “Human Resources (HR) is the most important element in
an organization. The quality of human resources is also utilized by the company to meet
the increasingly high demands of the market. The results of the study found that the ability
of hard skills and soft skills had a significant effect on employee work productivity with an
R2 value of 83.3%. The hard skills variable contributed 17.6% with a significance value of
0.015 <0.05. Meanwhile, soft skills contributed a significant 39.4% 0.000 < 0.05".
2. Rahayu Widayanti (2012) The Influence of Hard Skills and Soft Skills on Employee
Performance (Study at PT. Telkom Kandatel Malang) (Explanatory research)
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"Organizational competition factors can challenge every human being who works for
business organizations. Public organizations, however, only require human resources to
provide primary services PT. Telkom Kandatel Malang is a public organization engaged in
information and communication, and provides services and telecommunications
networks. The results show that hard skills and soft skills have a positive and
simultaneous effect on employee performance Partially hard skills and soft skills variables
have a significant positive effect, hard skills variables are found to be the dominant
variables have an influence on employee performance ".
3. Zulkifli Rasid, Bernhard Tewal, Christoffel kojo (2018) The Influence of Hard Skills and
Soft Skills on Employee Performance at Perum Damri Manado (Associative Research)
“Global competition requires companies to improve the performance of their human
resources. The performance of human resources is largely determined by the hard skills
and soft skills they have. The results show that hard skills and soft skills have a significant
effect on employee performance either simultaneously or partially. The results of the t test
can be concluded that the hypothesis is accepted. The results of this study suggest that
Perum DAMRI Manado continues to pay attention to improving hard skills and soft skills
by conducting training so that employee performance is getting better”.
4. Vera Dwi Wijayanti, Tony Susilo Wibowo (2021) Effect of Hard Skills and Soft Skills on
Employee Performance at the Giri Tirta Regional Drinking Water Company (Pdam) Office
Gresik Regency (Quantitative Approach) "The results obtained prove that hard skills and
soft skills have a positive and positive effect on significant effect on employee performance
either partially or simultaneously. The t-test showed that the hypothesis could be
accepted. Therefore, this research is suggested that PDAM Giri Tirta Gresik Regency can
pay better attention to the hard skills or soft skills of employees”.
5. Sri Langgeng Ratnasari, Okhe Alivhia Thiyarara (2020) Effect of Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and
Training on Productivity of Trainees' Employees (Questionnaire) “The results obtained in
this study are that Hard skills have a significant effect on the productivity of trainee
employees. Soft skills have no significant effect on the Productivity of Trainees'
Employees. Training has a significant effect on the Productivity of Trainees' Employees.
Hard skills, Soft skills, Training have a significant effect on the Productivity of Trainees'
Employees.
6. Ida Nuryana; Triwahyudiyanto (2016) The Effect of Softskills and Hardskills on the
Performance of Al-Rifa'ie Modern Vocational High School Prakerin Students (Study on Al-
Rifa'ie Gondanglegi Modern High School Prakerin Students) (Survey) "The data were
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analyzed by multiple linear regression analysis. The results of this study indicate that the
dominant variable is the hardskill variable. Hard skills have a significant influence because
students have technical knowledge and technical skills obtained from business practice or
industrial practice.
7. Wahyu Astutik, M. Sulhan (2022) Job Training, Soft Skills and Hard Skills Encouraging
Employee Performance Improvement (Quantitative Descriptive) “The results of the study
found that the three independent variables (X) had a significant effect on employee
performance. The results of the partial test of this study indicate that the ability of hard
skills has less effect on improving employee performance. This study also shows an R2
value of 0.682 which means that this model is able to provide an explanation of various
variations of the dependent variable by 68% ".
8. Akhmad Jafar, SE., MM Wahyuni (2016) The Influence of Hard Skills and Soft Skills on
Employee Performance at the Education Office of South Sulawesi Province (Quantitative)
“Thus it can be concluded that to improve employee performance can be done by
increasing hard skills and soft skills. Suggestions from this research are to improve
employee performance, the Education Office of South Sulawesi Province should always
hold training programs related to technical work in accordance with technological
developments and improve communication skills to create work team relationships ".
9. Setyanto Putro, Koes Yuliadi (2022) The effect of empowerment, hard skills and soft skills
on the performance of art studio employees in Yogyakarta (quantitative approach with
survey method) “The results of the research show that hard skills have a significant effect
on soft skills employee performance. Hard skills are also known to have a positive effect
on job performance on employee performance. Likewise, soft skills are also known to have
a positive effect on employee performance. Therefore, it is important for art studio
managers to increase empowerment, hard skills, and soft skills in an effort to improve
employee performance”.
10. Iffah Budiningsih, Tjiptogoro Dinarjo, Marlison (2020) Hard Skill Versus Soft Skill in
Achieving Employee Performance in the Jakarta Mass Rapid Transit (Mrt) Infrastructure
Project (Questionnaire with a linkert scale) to the achievement of employee performance
on the MRT infrastructure project, even though it only contributes 10% in the achievement
of employee performance; 2) the mathematical model Y = 2.284 + 0.364 X1 can be used to
predict the performance achievement of infrastructure project employees; 3) Partial or
plural soft-skills with hard-skills do not have a real impact on the achievement of
infrastructure project employee performance; 4) for types of work that rely more on
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technic-skills related to a high level of accuracy, then the performance of employees is
more influenced by hard-skills; 5) the need to include soft-skills that are in accordance
with the hard-skills learned in the learning process as a hidden curriculum”.
Discussion
The results of observations of the 10 literature reviews above, the authors get a general
description of the influence of the hardskills and softskills of company workers. Starting from the
aspect of empowerment to work professionalism. The influence of employee empowerment on
the company can occur because empowerment has become a much needed factor in the process
of completing work. With empowerment, employees will develop and be able to optimize their
potential abilities, so they can have the skills and knowledge needed to complete the job. Through
empowerment, employees are given responsibility and can improve work processes which in turn
can improve their performance. Therefore, without adequate support for employee
empowerment, the results of the work of employees will also not be optimal. Many of the studies
above prove that empowerment has a significant effect on employee performance. Therefore, the
results of this study support the theory and previous research that shows the important role of
empowerment in influencing employee performance.
Hard skills in the study were also proven to have a significant effect on employee
performance. In working to be able to carry out tasks properly, adequate technical skills are
required, especially for employee level tasks that require a lot of technical skills compared to
managerial skills. Hard skills are also closely related to the intellectual intelligence of employees
which relates to the level of knowledge needed in the process of completing work. The research
shows that hard skills are a significant factor affecting performance. Thus the results of the study
support the results of previous studies which showed the significance of hard skills in influencing
performance.
Soft skills in the study were also proven to have a significant effect on employee
performance. Conceptually, soft skills relate to personality or traits and interpersonal skills. These
personality attributes and personal skills are needed in the process of completing the work.
According to Wahyuni (2016), soft skills are personality traits, or interpersonal skills, which,
together with hard skills, enhance work and are manifested during interactions with people. Soft
skills are also known to determine about 85% of success in professional careers and significantly
affect employee performance. Thus the results of this study further strengthen the results of
previous studies which show the important role of soft skills in influencing employee
performance.
This study shows that the empowerment of abilities and skills has a significant effect on
employee performance. Thus, the more empowerment given to employees, it will have an impact
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on improving employee performance. Hard skills in this study are also known to have a positive
effect on employee performance, so the better the employee's hard skills, the higher the
employee's performance. Soft skills in this study also have a positive effect on employee
performance, so the better the soft skills of the art studio employees, the higher the employee's
performance. Thus, empowerment factors, hard skills, and soft skills play an important role in
determining employee performance.
Hard skills or technical abilities such as good verbal, mathematical and image classification
skills are able to enable employees to continue to develop and improve work performance. Hard
skills tend to be more visible (visible) and relatively on the surface as characteristics possessed
by humans. Therefore, with good individual hard skills, it is expected that employee performance
will increase even better in carrying out their work. Hard Skills that must be possessed by a
worker are technical skills, analytical thinking, managerial, written communication, planning and
conceptual thinking.
Individuals who have high emotional intelligence will perform better, while performance
will be positive for employees who have high emotional intelligence, and will have a negative
relationship when emotional intelligence is low. There are ten Soft Skills favored by managers at
work, namely communication, courtesy, flexibility, integrity, interpersonal skills, positive attitude,
professionalism, responsibility, cooperation and ethics.
Companies or organizations that are able to manage human resources so that they can
develop optimally are by improving the performance of their employees. Having good Hard Skills
and Soft Skills will motivate employees to improve their performance. Hard Skills and Soft Skills
are factors that support the creation of good employee performance. Employee performance can
be interpreted as the extent to which a person carries out his responsibilities and work duties,
there are many factors that affect whether or not the work of an employee is good. Several things
that affect the achievement of performance are the ability factor and motivation factor.
That is, employees who have an average IQ (IQ 110 – 120) with adequate education for their
positions and skilled in doing their daily work, will more easily achieve the expected work
performance. Therefore, employees need to be placed in jobs that match their expertise. Then,
motivation is formed from the attitude of an employee in dealing with work situations. Motivation
is a condition that moves employees who are directed to achieve organizational goals (work
goals). Mental attitude is a mental condition that encourages employees to try to achieve
maximum work performance. The mental attitude of an employee must be psychophysically ready
(attitude mentally, physically, goals and situations). This means that an employee must be
mentally prepared, physically able,
It is important for companies to know the performance of employees so that they can take
steps to develop existing human resources in their companies by involving employees in certain
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trainings. Environmental factors also affect employee performance, including how the physical
conditions of the workplace, materials, time to work, supervision, organizational design and
organizational climate.
CONCLUSION
Based on the results of this study, it is important for companies to increase empowerment,
hard skills, and soft skills in an effort to improve employee performance. Employees must be more
empowered in ways such as providing job delegation, talent coaching, education and
development, so that each employee can be more empowered and develop. This requires a
leadership role, so it must be more committed to empowering employees. Hard skills also need to
be improved, among others, by encouraging employees to increase their education level and
involving employees in employee job trainings. In this way, employees can have adequate
competence and work knowledge as an important component of hard skills.
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