Gatsby Benchmarks
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Providing young
people with skills
for life and work
Barclays’ LifeSkills programme supports employability as a strategy in
schools, providing hundreds of free resources for teachers and pupils.
KIRSTIE MACKEY
DIRECTOR OF LIFESKILLS, BARCLAYS
“
To be employed is to be at risk, to be employable is to
be secure,” said author Peter Hawkins, setting out ‘career
tactics for the 21st century’ in The Art of Building
Windmills, in 1999.
Never has his message been so relevant. Trends in the world, the
way we live, and in the workplace shape the types of skills employers
need – from automation to globalisation and increased longevity.
To move forward in a fast-changing jobs landscape, young
people require sustainable, transferable skills such as problem-
solving and resilience, in addition to their technical or academic
qualifications. And to set out on their career journey, they need to
be work ready.
“Quite often, we hear from
businesses that young people are not
ready for work when they leave
school,” says Kirstie Mackey, director
of the LifeSkills programme at Barclays,
which provides employabilit y
resources for 11-24 year olds.
“[When we first developed
LifeSkills] businesses were concerned
that they wouldn’t be able to grow
because they didn’t have a pipeline of
work-ready young talent.”
This employability skills gap, Mackey
believes, has its roots in “the
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28 // EMPLOYABILITY