Needs assessment of human resources soft skills learning and development programs in public organizations

Needs assessment is a first step in the process of human resources soft skills learning and development programs designing, and paying attention to it, will increase the effectiveness of them. this study addresses the need assessment for learning, and development programs of human resources soft skills in public organizations. Lack of attention to the essential differences between soft and hard skills in the needs assessment stage, will cause problems in the later stages of the personnel development process. Based on this, first the components of human resources soft skills were identified using the systematic review method; Then in order to identify other components of the needs assessment, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 experts in the field of human resources training and development, and content analysis was performed. Then, the findings validity of the content analysis, was calculated using the Delphi method, and descriptive statistics, and was confirmed by reaching the maximum consensus of the panelists participating in the study. Finally, soft skills were identified in two categories of individual, and social soft skills with 20 components, and needs assessment components with two main themes, four sub-themes and eight codes. Lack of proper attention to soft skills by public organizations indicates their need to designing these programs. It is also worthwhile to pay attention to the codification of soft skills in the jobs description in the needs assessment stage, and the necessary .classification between managerial and non-managerial jobs in terms of the type of their need for soft skills.