https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zs2pNSmCTQ
Bilanc is an app addressing the concern of communication skills gap by Indonesian freshgraduates entering the workplace.
Backed by research alongside HR experts, various scientific papers and whitepapers, we found that lack of exercise causes this gap. Oftentimes after training and assessments, employees do not have enough opportunity to practice their newly learned skills in their projects/assignments.
With Bilanc, we teach them communication techniques used in HR assessment institutions and real-world business situations from their pockets.
Our website: bilanc.id
We spent quite a long time researching this app. In the first few Engage & Investigation meetings we decided to take on upskilling / self-development as our theme. It was obviously a very large area and we needed to find a niche on which we base our app. So, in short—after lots of hours of deliberation, iterations of research and qualitative research:
Self-development → Professional skills → Soft skills → Communication!
Speak up!
So we've narrowed down self-development to professional skills. What's next?
From our research, we found that both intra-personal and interpersonal soft skills are important for employees and job seekers. The necessary skills are those adaptive skills that help us stay relevant in the coming years. Soft skills contribute up to 250% corporate ROI and 75% long-term employee success. Whereas hard skills only account to 25% employee success.
Despite the advancement of Industry 4.0 and its potential on automating certain human tasks, soft skills, including effective communication, are not easily replicable by computers, as they are characteristic to humans and very sophisticated to copy. Communication remains a timeless skill.
Another interesting issue actually lies after training or assessments. Not within, but after. Companies invest time and money to bring their employees to these programs in upping their soft skills. But once they come back to their own offices, employers did not provide much opportunity to apply what they've learned. This proves that evaluation or theories alone aren't enough—practice is necessary to help them grow.
Of all the HR experts and staff we interviewed, almost all said that communication is the most important skill to support one's career growth. Each industry, given their unique working style, does have their own desired skillsets. But almost all industries require communication, despite the degree or frequency of it. As explained by one of our experts, cigarette factories favor efficiency more than communication—you can't roll more cigarettes if you just talk. But outside the factory, they're back to mingling with each other again.
In line with result #1, communication skills have to be trained, not just understood or learned by theory. We realized that our user personae often tried to practice speeches, meetings, or such verbal sessions by themselves. But: