Soft skills training delivered as part of an active labour market programme to young people aged 16 to 24 can have positive impacts on young people’s engagement in learning and training, particularly apprenticeships.
Last updated: 26 August 2026
Low positive impact
Well supported
Low/no impact
Well supported
Low positive impact
Emerging
Low - unlikely to require intense, complex or specific resource needs for effective delivery
For every 100 young people who are NEET and take part in soft skills training as a component of a targeted youth employment intervention, around the same number of young people are in employment 12 to 24 months later compared to those who did not take part. This component makes little or no difference to recent employment.
Headline insights about this component based on current high-quality evidence, where soft skills training is delivered as part of an active labour market programme to young people aged 16 to 24.
Positive
By unlocking opportunities for young people to gain higher vocational qualifications and skills, soft skills training may over the long-term enhance job prospects and opportunities for finding and keeping good quality work.
Soft skills training is associated with a small positive impact on engagement in various forms of training and learning. The impact on apprenticeship participation is likely to be in the ‘high positive’ range (with over 50% probability). The impact on getting an occupational licence or completing a lower-level post-secondary training programme is likely to be in the ‘low positive’ range.
Work quality
Soft skills training is likely to support young people to earn higher wages when employed.
Soft skills training is associated with a high positive impact on income from work, with over 80% probability.
It does not appear to have an impact on other aspects of work quality such as employment duration and on the number of hours.
Subgroup analysis
Soft skills training is likely to have the greatest benefit for young people aged 22 to 24.
The probable impact on employment is in the ‘low positive’ range for those aged 22 and the ‘moderate positive’ range for those aged 24. Work quality and engagement in training outcomes are also more likely to be higher for those aged 22 or above.
Soft skills training seeks to develop interpersonal skills for the workplace, such as communication, teamwork, collaboration, problem-solving, decision-making, critical thinking and analysis.
Young people aged 16 and over who have limited work experience and who can benefit from learning more about the skills needed for employment.
Any UK organisation — business, charity, public-sector body or social enterprise — that meets legal requirements such as:
A few weeks or a small number of hours within a multi-component programme.
Funding may come from diverse sources or from a mixture of sources including:
Soft skills training can support individuals to:
Soft skills training can support employers to:
Calculations are based on insights from available high-quality studies on the complexity of delivery requirements and estimated associated costs.
Based on existing evidence, we’ve identified some common features that support the commissioning, design and delivery of effective youth employment programmes:
Design, fund and deliver outreach and recruitment activities that raise young people’s awareness, with targeted initiatives to reach under-represented group who are most likely to benefit.
This might include:
Discover more about risk factors associated with being NEET.
Also consider how best to identify and engage the most suitable partners and employers for a programme. Engagement should be timely and clear, in ways that raise awareness and facilitate recruitment, enrolment, and sustained engagement.
Effective programmes may use direct community outreach activities for engaging under-served groups, alongside up-to-date local and administrative data, working with public employment services, or advertising vacancies along with eligibility criteria.
Organisations that provide skills training to young people who face additional social and psychological barriers to employment may seek out expert staff to deliver this, for example tutors with professional experience and/or training to deliver a specialised programme. For example, one US intervention employed graduates with a social work credential and experience of working with adolescents. They received bespoke training and shadowed other outreach workers before taking on their own caseloads.
Design, fund and deliver programmes that tailor content and approach to the needs of the young people involved. This may involve a needs assessment at recruitment or orientation.
For young people who face additional social, personal, and psychological barriers, such tailoring may be more complex.
Some programmes use specialist content packages that have been developed by organisations with relevant expertise, often using research and evaluation evidence. Where these are used, seek a close match with the overall programme aims and suitability for a specific cohort of young people.
Examples include:
Organisations that work with young people who face additional social and psychological barriers to employment may seek out expert staff to deliver behavioural skills training, for example tutors with professional experience and/or training to deliver a specialised programme.
Some programmes integrate soft skills development into sector- or role-specific vocational training, for example through group and project work, or through activities that ‘mirror’ those of the workplace.
A strong relationship between policymakers, learning providers, employers, community organisations and local skills delivery organisations including Mayoral Strategic Authorities and Local Skills Improvement Plan areas supports effective youth employment support programmes.
Design, fund and deliver programmes that foster collaboration with education providers such as colleges to improve access to relevant teaching experience.
Support providers and delivery organisations to accurately and systematically capture and communicate data and milestones and track programme outcomes. This may include structured and standardised tracking forms, or developing realistic programme-specific performance frameworks.
For funders and commissioners – ensure recorded data, reporting and assessment captures a full range of appropriate and relevant youth employment and related outcomes to help rich understanding to ensure rich picture of what programmes do.
Encouraging reporting commonly recognised metrics allows evaluation to be easily comparable and included in the growing evidence base.
Design, fund and deliver programmes that:
| Included studies | 46 |
|---|---|
| Location(s) | High-income countries |
| Outcome | Labour force status, earnings, employment duration, hours worked, and education & skills |
| Comparator | 'Services as usual' / Business as usual |
The Youth Employment Toolkit brings together evidence from robust studies in high-income countries that:
Find details of individual studies, as well as other systematic reviews of youth employment evaluations, in the Youth Employment Evidence and Gap Map.
More information about included studies can be found in page 55-60 of the full CNMA report. The specific evidence profile for soft skills training can be found on page 78.
The evidence strength ratings for soft skills training reflect the number of studies included in the meta-analysis. Studies were scored on reported design, sample size, approach to attrition, and definitions of interventions and outcome measures. More detail can be found in the technical guide.
The current evidence can be strengthened by taking a consistent approach to incorporating standardised metrics for education, employment and training outcomes as well as outcomes that indicate work quality.
If you have feedback or a question about the Toolkit, please get in touch.
