很多人并不觉得软技能是个多么重要的东西。

数字学习平台D2L是富达、埃森哲等跨国企业的培训软件提供商。谈到软技能的问题，该公司的联合创始人、首席战略师杰里米·奥格尔认为：“‘软技能’这个词听来有些贬义，容易给人一种软弱的感觉。我更喜欢称其为‘持久技能’或‘人际技能’。”

软技能的确是一种“持久”的技能。奥格尔指出，有研究表明，所谓的“硬技能”，特别是IT行业的硬技能，平均18个月左右就会过时。而团队合作的能力、讲故事的能力、理解客户的能力等技能则永远不会过时。不过你换了多少次工作，这些技能都会一直伴随着你。至少到目前为止，人工智能在这些方面还没有办法取代你。

另外，几乎任何地方都对这些“持久技能”和“人际技能”有巨大需求。比如职业网站领英（LinkedIn）最近对美国的4000多名经理人和高管进行了一项调查，结果发现，“软”技能已经成了他们首要的培训目标。从全美大学与雇主协会的调查报告中可以看出，最近几年，就业市场上的高学分的理工科毕业生固然不少，但招聘经理们更想要的，却是那些能解决问题、能和团队成员和睦协作的人才。

去年5月，麦当劳对美国的6247名成年员工进行了一项调查，有88%的受访者认为，培养人际技能是“重要”或“非常重要”的，特别是对刚入职场的年轻人。值得注意的是，在18岁至24岁受访者中，有近一半人（46%）坦承，他们这个年龄群体（也就所谓“Z世代”或“95后”）普遍缺乏这些技能。麦当劳还调查了员工最终想在哪些领域发展自己的职业生涯。排在前五名的答案分别是：艺术与娱乐业、自主创业、医疗行业、食品服务业和科技行业。

根据调查结果，麦当劳制定了一项为期五年的大规模内训计划，以帮助麦当劳的85万名美国员工培养团队合作、客户服务和所谓的“责任意识”能力（所谓责任意识，就是要教育员工为什么要做一个可靠的人，为什么要守时等等）。

这项内训计划的口号是“做你想做的”，将于12月正式在全美启动。最吸引人的一点是，员工可以申请在最感兴趣的领域跟随一个知名人士学习。麦当劳将这些导师称为“影响者”。比如在医疗保健领域，麦当劳聘请的“影响者”是毕业于哈佛医学院的梅约医学中心皮肤科名医米娜·辛；创业领域的“影响者”则是对冲基金经理、风投家、知名主播、曾参与创办20多家企业的詹姆斯·阿尔塔彻。

麦当劳美国人力资源总监梅丽莎·克尔西表示，麦当劳的目标是“向员工展示，在他们所选择的领域，人们的日常生活是什么样的，成功又是什么样的。我们鼓励‘影响者’谈谈他们是如何学到‘软’技能的，又是怎样将这些软技能运用到他们的工作中的。”

此外，麦当劳还与一家名叫“成人与体验式学习理事会”的非盈利机构合作开发了一套职业规划指导工具，以手机APP的形式向所有员工免费提供，从而使员工能够在时间允许的条件下，按照自己的学习进度完成各个训练模块。另外，麦当劳还推出了一项“机会之路”学费报销项目，所有员工均可免费请专业顾问提供职业咨询，帮助他们制定长期职业目标。目前已有近五分之一（17%）报名该项目的员工申请了职业咨询服务，请专业顾问为他们规划职业发展。

麦当劳并未透露该公司在“做你想做的”项目上的花费。不过该公司曾公开表示，仅学费报销一项的支出就已增长了近三倍，达到1.5亿美元左右。目前已有3.3万余名员工参与该项目。克尔西表示，她希望接下来的培训能吸引更多员工报名参加。克尔西大方地承认，对于麦当劳的大多数员工来说，麦当劳只是他们职业生涯的一个中转站，而并非终点——毕竟很多麦当劳的员工只有十几岁，或者还是在校大学生。

克尔西表示：“当然，如果员工们大学毕业之后，想回到麦当劳做营销、分析或者管理工作，我们也是很高兴的。但不管怎样，让员工接受更多培训，特别是软技能方面的培训，也能在短期内为我们培养一批更好的员工。”

话虽这样说，但很多员工大学毕业后，或许真的会回到麦当劳长期发展。在领英公司的一项调查中，有高达94%的受访者表示，他们更倾向于选择愿意为他们提供职业发展的雇主。要知道，麦当劳在北美的各个国家都有近50万名员工，你们公司的下一个优秀的人才，可能就是它培养出来的。

不用谢。（财富中文网）

本文作者安妮·费希尔是一名职业专家，也是《财富》杂志关于21世纪工作和生活方式的专栏“Work It Out”的专栏作家。

译者：朴成奎

No question about it, “soft skills” have a PR problem.

“Calling them ‘soft’ sounds derogatory. It sounds weak,” observes Jeremy Auger, co-founder and strategy chief at digital-learning powerhouse D2L, purveyor of training software to Fidelity, Accenture, and many others. “I prefer to call them durable skills. Or human skills.”

“Durable” indeed. Auger points to research showing that hard skills, particularly in IT, now become obsolete after an average of just 18 months. A knack for teamwork, or storytelling, or empathy with customers, by contrast, never wears out. You can take it with you no matter how many times you change jobs and, so far at least, artificial intelligence can’t one-up you.

Moreover, durable-slash-human skills are in huge demand just about everywhere. Consider: LinkedIn recently surveyed 4,000 U.S. managers and executives and found “soft” skills are now their No. 1 training priority. Reports from the National Association of Colleges and Employers have been advising new grads for the past few years that, while STEM majors and high GPAs are swell, what hiring managers really want is more candidates who can solve problems and work well with teammates.

So it comes as no big surprise that, when McDonald’s commissioned a nationwide poll last May of 6,247 adults, 88% said the chance to cultivate human skills is “important” or “very important,” especially for young people who are new to the workforce. Notably, nearly half (46%) of the 18- to 24-year-olds said that these skills are lacking among their own Gen Z age group. The same survey also asked McDonald’s workers to name the fields where they eventually hope to build their careers. The top five answers: arts and entertainment, entrepreneurship, health care, food service, and technology.

The research capped off five years of effort to design a massive internal training effort, aimed in large part at helping McDonalds’ 850,000 U.S. employees to up their game in areas like teamwork, customer service, and what the company calls “responsibility” (meaning, for instance, why it’s important to be dependable and show up on time).

Dubbed “Where You Want to Be,” the new training campaign kicks off in December. One intriguing feature: Any employee can apply for the chance to spend time shadowing a prominent person, or what McDonald’s calls an “influencer,” in the field that interests them most. One of these, in health care, is Meena Singh, M.D., a dermatologist trained at Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic. Another, in entrepreneurship, is James Altucher, a hedge fund manager, venture capitalist, and podcaster, who has founded or co-founded 20 startups.

The goal, says McDonald’s U.S. chief people officer Melissa Kersey, is to “show employees what day-to-day life is like, and what success looks like, in their chosen field. We’ve encouraged the influencers to talk about how they’ve learned their ‘soft’ skills, and how they apply them in their work.”

At the same time, a new set of career-planning and mentoring tools—designed in partnership with the nonprofit Council for Adult & Experiential Learning—will be available for free to all employees, in mobile-app form so that people can work on the training modules at their own pace, when their schedules allow. Partly because almost one in five (17%) employees enrolled in McDonalds’ “Archway to Opportunity” tuition-reimbursement program has asked for counseling to help them decide on a career path, everyone will also be able to consult professional advisers, again at no charge, who can lend a hand with long-term goals.

McDonald’s won’t say what it’s spending on the “Where You Want to Be” campaign, although it has reported publicly that tuition reimbursement has nearly tripled recently to about $150 million. Some 33,000 of the company’s workers have already participated in that, and Kersey says she hopes the new training will encourage more to sign up. She’s enough of a realist to concede that McDonald’s is a way station on the road to some other career for most of its workers—many of whom are, after all, still in their teens or in college.

“We’d love it, of course, if people come back after they finish school and do marketing, or analytics, or management for us,” Kersey says. “But either way, more training, especially in soft skills, makes them better employees for us in the short term.”

Noted, but even so, Kersey may get her wish. An overwhelming 94% of employees in the LinkedIn study said they’d be inclined to stick with an employer who helped them develop their careers. In the meantime, considering that McDonald’s has nearly a million employees in every part of North America, the company might just be training your next great hire.

You’re welcome.

Anne Fisher is a career expert and advice columnist who writes “Work It Out,” Fortune’s guide to working and living in the 21st century.