Generic Employability Skills

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Generic Employability Skills

• Centre for Developing and Evaluating Lifelong
  Learning (CDELL)

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Aim

• To identify the scope that exists for regional
  and local interventions in the South West that
  will improve young peoples generic employability
  skills in areas of agreed priority need

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Issues

• The generic employability skills needs of young
  people (aged 16-21) in the SW
• The extent to which these needs are being
  addressed by current policies, programmes and
  providers
• The scope for interventions to improve young
  peoples generic employability skills

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Research Design

• Phase 1 Desk research
• Phase 2 Field research
• Phase 3 - Final report and
• Follow-up

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Phase 1 Desk Research

• Highlighted the strategic and policy framework
  within which the study sits
• Examined the ways in which the questions raised
  by this project have been addressed in previous
  work
• Refined the focus for the Phase 2 fieldwork

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Phase 2 Field Research 1

• Semi-structured telephone interviews with
  employers, employees and providers
• Consultation workshop involving local and
  regional policy makers and practitioners

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Final Report and Follow-up

• Carry projects recommendations forward in action
• Establish the extent to which the projects
  recommendations are being carried forward
• Identify any barriers to their implementation in
  the organisations involved.

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Findings 1

• The employers, employees and providers adopted
  holistic and integrated approaches to generic
  skills and knowledge, which included a wide
  variety of personal attributes and values.
• The employees attached less importance to
  personal attributes than did employers and
  providers.

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Findings 2

• In referring to skills and attributes, the
  respondents not only used different terms to
  refer to the same skill or personal attribute,
  but also gave different meanings to seemingly
  identical terms.
• Different employers valued and weighted
  employability skills and personal attributes
  quite differently.

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Findings 3

• Most of the employers and providers believed that
  there is a shortage of generic employability
  skills.
• The employers identified deficiencies with regard
  to personal attributes rather than to generic
  skills.

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Findings 4

• The employers provided relatively little support
  in the workplace for the development of generic
  skills.
• The employees had very limited understandings of
  the nature and importance of generic
  employability skills, and saw the acquisition and
  development of technical skills as the key to
  career progression.

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Findings 5

• Providers recognised that employability skills
  are more relevant to young people and employers
  if they see them as linked to the work context.
• Providers across the region are attempting to
  integrate the delivery of employability skills
  into vocational courses. However, there is
  considerable variation in the methods used to
  assess, teach and foster the development of
  employability skills.

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Recommendations 1

• Strategies need to be developed to vigorously
  promote the importance of generic skills to all
  relevant groups. These strategies should ensure
  that employers, employees and providers clearly
  understand what generic employability skills are,
  why these skills are important, and what the
  role of the different stakeholders is in
  fostering the development and maintenance of such
  skills.

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Recommendations 2

• Strategies need to be developed to form
  partnerships between providers and employers so
  that employability skills frameworks, which are
  appropriate in different sectors (and
  localities), can be devised. These frameworks
  need to reflect the range of skills that
  employers, employees and providers deem to be
  relevant.

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Recommendations 3

• Strategies need to be developed share good
  practice in the teaching, learning and assessment
  of generic employability skills. The key topics
  are approaches to developing sector-specific
  employability skills frameworks approaches to
  integrating the development of employability
  skills into vocational areas and approaches to
  the assessment of employability skills.

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Recommendations 4

• Strategies need to be devised to increase the
  provision of on-going professional development
  for teachers, trainers and assessors

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Consultation Workshop 1

• Common language for generic skills
• Centres of excellence in generic skill
  development
• Support generic skills development through
  existing initiatives

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Consultation Workshop 2

• Work with employers to identify their generic/key
  skills needs
• Respect sector differences and take note of
  initiatives in sectors
• Encourage management cultures that emphasise
  skills development (as opposed to acquisition of
  qualifications)

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Consultation Workshop 3

• Encourage people to see generic skills as
  developing over time
• Develop structured work experience for school
  students
• Ultimate responsibility for generic skills
  development lies with the individual

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Next Steps

• Carry the recommendations forward
• Monitor the implementation of the recommendations
• New project