Employment

This section focuses on how employers value key skills. It also gives you an indication of how some UK employers use key skills in the world of work.

What is the evidence that employers value key skills?

Dick Charlton is responsible for the development of the young people employed in operations at Coca Cola's largest bottling plant in the UK. This is what he says about key skills:

• "Key skills are at the heart of what we do in business."
• "They (the wider key skills) are the skills we are looking for in young people ... managers in the future."
• "As an employer we look for the key skills when recruiting people or promoting them."

You can see Dick Charlton and hear more of his message in the final section of the video/DVD The Wider Key Skills: Enhancing Learning. See the publications page to order a copy.

John Cook, Head of Early Careers Development at Rolls Royce says:

"What really makes the difference is the applicant's ability to demonstrate what are now widely referred to as key skills, such as working as a member of a team, communication and interpersonal skills, problem solving and planning and taking responsibility for one's own learning and development. These are the skills that differentiate the good from the great."

What does research say?

The Surrey University Careers Service published a study in 1997 looking at graduate recruitment. It examined the recruitment literature of 60 companies known to have employed Surrey graduates.

• 90% refer to communication
• 50% mention teamwork
• 35% name problem solving
• 25% cite IT
• 25% discuss planning/organisation
• 10% look at numeracy

Employers' demands for personal/transferable skills in graduates

1000 job advertisement for graduates were analysed for their skill content.

Provision of skills training

73% of firms reported that they develop skills. The following list gives a breakdown of that development:

• 64% offer organisational skills development
• 62% offer communication skills development
• 44% offer IT skills development
• 42% offer team working skills development
• 39% offer analysis skills development
• 36% offer presentation skills development

A view from Andy Westwood at the Employer Policy Institute...

"If you ask an employer about what they want from key skills, there is of course no guarantee that they will understand or even answer the question. If you ask them what makes a good employee, there is a better chance of a response. However, if you ask what skills are missing in their employees then there is a real danger that you could be talking for hours. This is the reality of the key skills debate."

There is no doubt that employers are increasingly vocal about the competencies that they expect from their employees. The Skills Needs in Britain survey states very clearly that the skills most lacking in the UK's 16 to 24 year olds are: Technical and Practical Skills, General Communication Skills, Customer Handling Skills, Team Working Skills, Computer Literacy Skills, Problem Solving Skills, Management Skills, Basic Literacy and Numeracy Skills and Managing own Development. All of the six key skills are readily identifiable in this list and it is this collection of skills, give or take one or two, that is seen as the primary responsibility of the education system.

Employers' organisations are clear about this responsibility:

• All school leavers should have basic mastery of the 3 Rs and the essential generic skills that are needed in the workplace. [Institute of Directors]
• The education system needs to develop employability more effectively - a number of persistent gaps remain - though technical and practical skills are for employers rather than education to tackle. [CBI]

Much of this realisation on the part of employers has come with the emergence of a new economy - and the increasing pace with which skills are becoming obsolete.

This is as relevant to more traditional employers as to the lastminute.coms of this world. Ford run an Engineering GNVQ with Barking and Havering Colleges in East London. One might expect this programme to be so heavily business focused that it would be intentionally biased toward Ford technical processes and not on more general elements and options within the GNVQ units. This is not the case. The programme incorporates additional English and Maths and team-working skills, beyond those found in the key skills components of the programme. Derek Todd, Manager of the Apprentice Programme explains:

"We teach basic engineering in the first year and then we never use it again... We don't want people whose skills become out of date in two years, we need the skills in the programme to have a much longer shelf life."

The top skills they look for at Ford? Wanting to learn, analytical skills, team working skills, problem solving. presentation skills and mental arithmetic. The lesson for key skills is simple. They are what employers want and in the widest sense they answer many of employers' complaints - they just need to be described in a language that employers understand.

What is the role of employers in supporting key skills?

• As stakeholders, employers reap the benefits of key skills and feed their needs and findings into the equation.
• As consumers, employers reap the benefit of key skills training in their recruitment.
• As partners, employers offer work placements for practising and evidencing key skills. Many assess key skills.

Summary of this section

• HE/UCAS
  
• Employment