The future of soft skills development: a systematic review of the literature of the digital training practices for soft skills

Soft skills are becoming increasingly important in the workplace. Due to their interpersonal nature and experiential face-to-face reality, they are often touted as nearly impossible to develop online; our study finds that an increasing body of literature is offering evidence and solutions to overcome impediments and promote digital technologies use in soft skills training. This review aims to perform a state of the art on the research on digital solutions for soft skills training using a systematic review of literature. A systematic literature review following the PRISMA statement was conducted on the ISI Web of Science, where from 109 originally collected papers, 37 papers were held into consideration for the in-depth analysis. This paper aims at bringing clarity for both research and practice to facilitate and promote more effective online training initiatives as well as innovative solutions for training in different areas. In recent years, the global economy has been facing structural changes, rapidly evolving into the world of digital transformation. The unpredictability of the nature and pace of the changes will make it crucial that individuals in groups, organizations and societies alike develop skills for dealing with all kinds of situations, especially soft skills and in particular emotional and social competencies. In this work we look into the literature in a systematic way in order to understand the types of competences most addressed, most commonly used techniques and positive and negative results of the training, in order to give the reader a clear understanding of the state of the art in digital training practices for soft skills.