In the News
Soft skills, or core skills, or transferable skills, or employability skills or whatever you want to call them are in high demand. These can include teamwork, speaking and listening, problem solving, as well as creativity and innovation.
These are skills employers want and the industry needs. A recent study by the National Foundation for Educational Research has identified how, with roles in the health, social and personal care sectors expected to grow in the future, the employment skills which will be most in need are:
problem solving and decision making
critical thinking and analysis
communication
collaboration and cooperation
Research published by Skills Builder Partnership this month, based on a YouGov survey of 2,200 adults, has found soft skills are worth an annual pay boost of up to £5,900. Eighty-three per cent of workers would like more opportunities to build essential skills and leading business group the CBI has “regularly called for skills including teamwork, speaking and listening, and problem solving to be a normal outcome of a good education and then further nurtured by employers,” the report reads. Yet only 14 per cent of all workers have had a chance from their employer to develop these skills through structured learning.
Bridgehead Education this week attended the FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference, where Ofqual's executive director for vocational and technical qualifications Catherine Large told delegates the regulator is "keen to understand how best to assess ‘soft skills’".
Interview
We spoke with WorldSkills UK’s head of skills development and international competition Parisa Shirazi about the role soft skills play in supporting learners to achieve success in education, employment and when they represent the UK in international competitions.
What do soft skills mean to you and to WorldSkills UK?
Often people call these soft skills. I prefer to call them transferable skills. Because I think when you have the word ‘soft’ there is less impact and power behind the meaning and value of the word and actually relating that to the transfer of those skills that you adopt and develop over time, which you can then take into your workplace or into life is far more meaningful.
So for us at WorldSkills UK, it is about developing these skills to equip young people with the right mindset and attitude to maintain a sustained peak performance, whether that is in their personal lives, programmes of study or at work. We are about developing that whole person to ensure a lifelong success of their legacy, of their experience in education and training.
It’s about giving them skills which won’t just help them in the competition but will help them through their employment and their lives?
Absolutely. For us it is about equipping a young person with the best possible infrastructure and environment to enable them to succeed. Part of that is about us developing human potential and supporting an individual’s self-efficacy to sustain and build on learnt skills and behaviours as they progress in life.
How important are these transferable skills in the competition space?
They are incredibly important. In high performance environments there are a set of skills that one would need in order to perform at their optimal performance in a pressurised setting.
The transferable skills we practice are adopted from elite sports methodologies. They include things like mental practice, focus and distraction control. This allows people to self-regulate emotions, giving them mental space to problem solve under pressure. Whilst these skills are important in a competition space, they are equally important in the workplace. It’s not just about competition preparation and performance.
You cannot have the technical skills alone
We have adopted a framework through a partnership with Grey Matters called “The psychological characteristics of developing excellence”. They are a set of ten mental and behavioural skills that we apply to our training programmes, and to competition. We offer them as online learning to everyone in education and training to help develop those skills. They are designed for teachers and trainers and include areas such as planning and self-organisation, to quality of practice, to looking at goal setting and rewards.
How would you rate the importance of these transferable skills next to the technical skills which competitors need as well?
I would say it’s 50/50. You cannot have the technical skills alone and just expect to perform optimally. You really do need to have those transferable skills. So it’s absolutely critical that you’ve got both the technical capability and the higher order competency to be able to perform within your particular environment. You also need to be able to adopt and use those transferable skills to do things like problem solve, perform under pressure, be resilient and manage your time properly. These are all critical skills and you cannot have one without the other.
How does teaching these transferable skills, how does it affect competitors’ outcomes in the competition and their life?
In competition it provides the tools and confidence to succeed. Creating a space to experience and understand the different skills that are required to perform. Not only technically, but also those psychological or behavioural skills that they need. Through the WorldSkills UK training programmes, we give young people the opportunity to test and practice those skills throughout their journey with us. But feedback and self-reflection are also very important. It’s vital to make sure that you are providing a young person with the opportunity to really think about what it is they are doing and how they can improve.
At WorldSkills UK, we equip them with the fundamental skills that they can then build on, to go further and faster in work and in life, resulting in career role models to inspire more young people to consider apprenticeships and technical education.
Opinion
Dr Lisa Morrison Coulthard discusses NFER's new five-year programme which is looking into future skills needs, including training needed for employment.
The Critical Quest for Future-Proof Skills
The world of work is anticipated to undergo a significant transformation over the next decade and beyond. New technologies, coupled together with demographic and environmental change are expected to fundamentally reshape the labour market in terms of the nature of jobs workers do and the type of skills that they need. Skills such as creativity, critical thinking, team work problem solving and resilience – which complement the new technologies and other changes taking place - are likely to become increasingly important for jobs across the economy.
Understanding the skills needed most in the labour market in the future, how this demand will be met, and where any skills gaps are likely to be are essential. However, the transformation and its implications for education, employers and the workforce is not well understood. Without evidence-based long term planning to address future skills needs, the risk of higher rates of underemployment and unemployment and enduring social and economic problems increases.
New research and insights
To address this, the NFER is leading a five-year strategic research programme to increase understanding of the future skills needs, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. NFER is leading a multi-disciplinary team, including co-investigators from the universities of Sheffield, Warwick and Roehampton, as well as with Cambridge Econometrics, Kantar, and the Learning and Work Institute.
New technologies, coupled together with demographic and environmental change are expected to fundamentally reshape the labour market
We aim to provide new insights into the demand for and supply of employment skills most needed in future, when new technologies and other effects are expected to become more embedded in the labour market. From this, which essential employment skills will be most needed in future, where the skills gaps are, which groups are most at risk of not having the skills needed, and how best to support those affected to identify key areas where they need to re-skill, can be identified. We will also investigate how the education system can support the development of the essential employment skills needed in future.
Understanding the challenge and planning for the future
Armed with the evidence generated by our programme of research – the nature of the challenge will be better understood and used by government, educationalists and employers to inform the planning and delivery of a future skills strategy designed to meet employment needs in the coming decades.
With the right strategy implemented at the right time, people will work and flourish in their jobs, helping to secure a prosperous future for our economy and society.