policy & reform
The skills employers want
Released after two years of consultation, new guidelines on the core abilities needed for work identify just what they look like and how they can be developed. By Sue Goodwin and Kate Perkins
Employability skills, generic skills, key competencies, graduate attributes – these non-technical skills have been a feature of the education and training landscape in one form or another for more than 20 years. There has been a growing recognition of their importance to workplace performance and productivity and an increasing emphasis on them in tertiary education. Yet, many employers are still saying these are the skills that graduates lack.
The recently released Core Skills for Work developmental framework( CSfW) sheds some light on why these skills are valued, how they are developed and why employers may be dissatisfied.
In 2009, Ithaca Group was commissioned by the federal government to develop a new approach to employability skills. Driving this work was the success of the Australian Core Skills Framework( ACSF) in providing a common language and reference points for identifying, talking about and addressing language, literacy and numeracy skill needs. The CSfW framework was designed to provide a similar basis for the identification and development of employability skills over a range of different sectors.
It was released in August this year, after two years of development and input from more than 800 people, including representatives of employers, unions, industry groups, schools, universities, community and vocational education and training providers and employment services. It is already being used – by universities, training package developers, school curriculum developers, career service providers and more – and helping students, educators and employers to focus more explicitly on the development, adaptation and application of these oftenoverlooked skills.
WHICH SKILLS? An important aspect of the development process was to identify what Australian employers believed the core generic skills were.
The final set is not radically different from what we’ ve seen before: priorities may have changed but, overall, employers are still looking for much the same things as they were 20 years ago. What is new is the way the skills are presented in the framework.
FOCUS ON WHAT’ S TEACHABLE, LEARNABLE, OBSERVABLE The CSfW framework has been designed for educators, trainers and those who work with job seekers. It unpacks what employers say they want, using a language and structure that enables these skills to be clearly identified, taught and learned.
A key feature is that complex behaviour has been broken down into smaller, observable components. For example, employers identified the ability to work as part of a team as
22 | campusreview. com. au