The role of Soft skills in Smart working in Europe

This thesis aims to close the gap in theory about Soft skills notion in the todays new way of working. In particular it studies the importance of Soft skills in Smart workers compared to Traditional workers. The first part of the study analyses the concept of Soft skills in particular the soft skills that are needed in the todays workplace. Then it studies how is it possible to measure the presence of these skills in an employee and how companies can teach them to create an added value. The second part of the thesis is aimed to understand the todays concept of Digital working and which Soft skills are mostly required by employers for a digital position. Consequently, the paper analyses the relationships between Digital workers' Soft skills and their wellbeing. The final part of the dissertation means to answer to the following questions: whether Soft skills are important in all occupations, if there is any significant differences in terms of soft skills requirements, perception of training needs and training opportunities as well as of psychological wellbeing between Smart or Traditional type of working. To answer these research questions an empirical analysis is performed on secondary data coming from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), developed by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Condition. This thesis is considering the last available edition (6th) produced in 2015. In this edition, Eurofound interviewed nearly 44,000 workers in 35 countries, but we only consider those workers who are employed by a company. The questions of the survey regard a broad range of issues, including work organization and well-being, and several of them can be used as proxies of the concepts of soft skills and digital work.