I recently was part of the South Asia Skills Policy Dialogue in London. One key topic that was revisited many times during this valuable conference was the huge gap in the softer side of employability skills. Gaps like creativity, communication, optimism, resilience and confidence are recognised now as being core and vital skills that need to be fully embedded in education systems alongside traditional qualifications and vocational pathways. A growing recognition that young people need to prepare for both life and work and that characteristics, values and habits need to be nurtured and developed alongside everything else.
Whether you call them soft skills, generic/core skills, personal development or just employability skills, today's employers want people entering the workforce to already have skills like critical thinking, a willingness to take risks, use initiative, have confidence, adaptability and flexibility, project passion and enthusiasm. Yet whether you're in South Asia or South Wales, the issues are the same - education systems do not provide learning for these sorts of qualities.
Often the buck is passed i.e. "it's not the role of education to get students 'work-ready'" and that employers can and will provide job-specific training. Surely though, any education system should be encouraging intellectual curiosity, developing confidence and risk-taking?
Most UK universities run an "employability week". These typically consist of a few talks and workshops on how to write a CV and how to present at an interview. That's it. And also that's if the students re even there and have not just "taken the week off".
Plainly not enough. What's missing are the kinds of skills and qualities that can only be developed over time: honesty, integrity, creative problem-solving in addition to all the others I've already mentioned. So even if such training were part of employability week, how realistic would it be to cram those into a couple of workshops anyway?
Young people need to develop their own self-awareness of some of these skills. Sure, the more opportunities they have to nurture them whilst going through education and other life experiences (which parents need to encourage too), the better but everything begins and has to begin with self-awareness. There are opportunities for this to happen through facilitating some reflection after a team or group activity, fir example. Often what happens when put into a group for a project is that a young person will do the same thing over and over without really getting any sense of their own strengths and weaknesses as a team player. Yet simple reflection activities that are facilitated well will help, over time, to becoming better at working smartly, autonomously and collaboratively with grace and ease. It's not enough to give students "team projects" and expect them to learn those things by themselves. This is just one example.
Another point discussed in the Policy Dialogue was that teachers and trainers themselves are not necessarily equipped to help facilitate such activities or integrate soft skills alongside other subjects. They need professional development as well as the vital institutional support to enable them to do this.
What is clear is that to deal with all the skills gaps requires collaboration and joined-up thinking and working together. Partnerships between government agencies, training providers, schools, universities, consultants, coaches, ngo's and employers are all key to enabling a better equipped and innovative workforce.
I am excited to be piloting The Advantage training at the University College Birmingham's forthcoming employability week. The two-day workshop consists of a range of experiential learning exercises that raise immediate awareness of adaptability, empathy, critical thinking, integrity, resilience, optimism and being proactive. The key to all of this is skilled facilitation of the essential review and reflection needed to help young people (and anyone) understand strengths they didn't know they had and how to manage themselves more effectively.
The new Ebook The Advantage for Graduates: how to get the soft skills you need right now was published October 5th 2013. £2.54 from Amazon borrow for free.
