RESEARCH ARTICLE


Is Training Effective to Develop Individual’s Soft Skills in Organizations? Emphatic Communication Training on Friendly and Helpful Behavior in Private Hospital



Ferdinand Hindiarto1, Rahmat Hidayat1, *, Bagus Riyono1
1 Faculty of Psychology, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia


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Creative Commons License
© 2020 Hindiarto et al

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department, Faculty of Psychology, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia;
Tel: +62 81328660234; E-mail: r.hidayat@ugm.ac.id


Abstract

Background:

Training is a common activity done in HR management practices. However, previous studies on the effectiveness of trainings show inconsistent results, in particular, on developing soft skills. Theoretically, achieving effectiveness is more difficult compared to hard skill training.

Objectives:

This study is aimed at examining whether training is effective to develop individual’s competencies in an organization, especially in the area of soft skills.

Methods:

This research uses experimental method by The Untreated Control Group Design with Pre-Post-Test. The study was conducted at a private hospital X in Semarang city. The participants of this study comprised of 496 subjects, which were divided into experimental and control groups. The intervention given to the experimental group was empathic communication training which is aimed at building sumeh (friendly) and nulungan (helpful) behavior, as the actualization of organizational values. The measurement of friendly and helpful behavior was done before and after the intervention, that was by post-test 1 and post-test 2.

Results:

There was a significant difference between the scores of pre-test and post-test 1 and there was no difference between the scores of post-test 1 and post-test 2 for experimental group. For the control group, there was no difference either between the scores of pre-test and post-test 1 or between post-test 1 and post-test 2.

Conclusion:

Emphatic communication training is effective to develop friendly and helpful behavior, where both of the behaviors are included in soft skills category.

Keywords: Emphatic communication, Soft skill, Training, Training effectiveness, Pre-test, Post-test.