Employability Skills - Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

SECONDARY RESEARCH ON EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS

Modern career has been described as “without any boundary” by Arthur (1994), Bridges (1994) and Hyatt (1995). Employability skills (training participation and task flexibility), shows workers desire to be attractive in an ever changing labour market (de Grip et al, 2004).

View on chances of workers’ employability in organization (Levy et al, 1992), knowledge of labour market (Outin, 1990); capacity to influence their career (Bloch and Bates, 1995) and abilities to deal with changes (Hyatt, 1995) has increased of recent. Low skilled workers in Europe have seen high level of unemployment and low wages (Dreze, 2002; Krugman, 1994). Even in countries with flexible wages like the US, unemployment of low skilled workers has increased drastically (Glyn and Salverda, 2000; Gautier, 2002). Falkinger and Grossmann (2001) revealed the mechanism underlying the fact that employment of low skilled workers is not guaranteed in flexible labour markets.

Steedman and McIntosh (2001) revealed that the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) provides the most acceptable means of measuring skills with a given time and space. They recommended that individuals categorized into ISCED 0-2 (education at lower secondary school or below) should be classified as low skilled. This is because of the low comparability of data and training available to people with this qualification and people with higher qualification (Brunello and Medio, 2001; Elias and Davies, 2004; Nestler and Kailis, 2002a, b; OECD, 1991, 1993, 1999).

Study by American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) has revealed 16 employability skills, across all categories of job. (1) Basic     Competency Skills – reading, writing, computation; (2) Communication Skills – speaking, listening; (3) Adaptability Skills – problem solving, thinking creatively: (4) Development Skills – self esteem, motivation and goal setting, career planning; (5) Group Effectiveness Skills – interpersonal skills, teamwork, negotiation; and (6) Influencing Skills – understanding organizational culture, sharing leadership (O’Neil et all. 1997)..

1.  Basic Competency Skills

Competence has different meaning, and it remains one of the discussed terms in organizations (Nordhaug and Gronhaug, 1994). The Management Charter Initiative (MCI), 1988 defined competence as how individuals react to changes in organization with respect to their duties at any given time. Common knowledge suggests that employee morale has direct impact on customer satisfaction. Competence skill is very useful in an organization because it enhances performance (Jubb and Robotham, 1997; Garavan and McGuire, 2001). They are necessary for career success at all levels of employment and for all levels of education since all form of organization duties revolves around reading and writing.

Employers have pointed out competency as a major employability skill, because it helps in easy assimilation of information; better understanding of the company goals and objectives, critical analysis of tasks to aid performance, gaining competitive advantage and profit growth (Carneval, Gainer & Meltzer 1990). In every organization, language and competency is the mainstream for allocating task, caring out task, and following the standards of operation set by the organization. Since organizational environments differ, organization ability to survive fully depends on how competent the organization is with the given environment they operate in. Though, competence is an important skill in an organization, Akin (1991), argued that the way it is implemented has to be looked into.  

1.2 Communication skills

As the global economy and corresponding technology are ever changing, the demand for qualitative communication skills that send clear and concise message to the audience (Marks, 2001). Web survey by Chritensen and Rees (2002), identified “listening effectively”, concise grammar, and clear and correct writing as the most important communication skills need in an organization. Employees need to develop communication skills in other to deal with people efficiently and effectively (Sawyer et al, 2003). Piehl (2003) emphasized that communication skills development are not just oral and writing.  In other to improve communication skills, Messner (2001), employees should evaluate themselves to understand their strengths and weaknesses. For example, if employee does not normally speak in meeting, he should try taking a more positive approach by offering ideas in meetings. Messner (2001) also revealed that proper handling of emails is also a good communication skill.

Communication skill is an integral part of any organization and high required by employees. Employers require employees to poses communication skills because every aspect of the business day to day activities depends on it (Plumy and Dudley, 2001). These skills are essential to employer because they enhance qualitative understanding and information assimilation in an organization. Employers understand the need of proper passage of information and that is why these skills are of high priority and interest to employers.

1.3 Adaptability skills

Given the importance of international business growth, the need for employees with necessary adaptation skills is on the rise. In almost every industry, adaptability is becoming the prerequisite for survival and maintaining competitive edge (Ali and Masters, 1988; Peters, 1985). In addition, firms nowadays are viewed as experimental space within which workers engage in creative tasks (Webber, 1994). Zeira and Banai (1985) stressed more on this by pointing out that the most desired criteria for selecting expatriates executives are proficiency in the host country’s language, expertise, seniority and success in previous oversea assignments.

Employees with adaptability skills are of merit to employers not just in maintaining a committed and talented workforce, but, also to enhance innovation, creativity and problem solving, efficient customer service and improved product quality and employees with these skills have more employability edge against the least (Kandola and Fullerton, 2003 p. 51). Employers expect workers to solve problems, improve the methods they use, and engage effectively with their co-workers (Bailey 1997; Packer 1998).

1.4 Development skills

One way for organizations to become more productive is to capitalize in their workers development abilities (Katz, 1964, p. 132). An organization that depends solely upon is set standards is not a stable social system. Many practitioners have endorsed the idea that employees’ individual innovation helps to attain organizational success (Van de Ven, 1986; Axtell et all, 2000; Smith, 2002; Unsworth and Parker, 2003). Individual development is important for management principles, including quality management (McLoughlin and Harris, 1997; Ehigie and Apkan, 2004), consistent improvement strategies (Boer and Gieskes, 1998), Kaizen (Imai, 1986), corporate venturing (Elfring, 2003) and organizational learning (Senge, 1990).

Employers who employ employees with development skills stand higher than their competitors because employees with development skills helps the organization to become market leaders, through creation of new product and services (Zaltman et al, 1973; Axtell et al, 2000).

Effectiveness skills

Barrick et al (1998) and Van Vianen and De Dreu (2001), found that the more difference in conscientiousness of team members, the lower their output. Interpersonal skill such as emotional stability can show how confident and balanced employees deal with duties and respond to new ambiguous and new tasks (Barrick and Mount, 1991).

Barrick et al. (1998) stated that employees with effectiveness skills helps to make the managerial process more easy for the employers, because they understand the company’s goals and objectives easily. It is the key objective for workers who desire worthwhile employment (Forrier and Sels, 2003).

Influencing skill: the way organizations function and respond to changes in the marketplace with available information has changed (Katzenbach, 1998). Because of the ability in a team to provide coordinated and directed efforts for handling sophisticated task, organization now depend on teams and this points out the importance of leadership in a team (Monotoya-Weiss et al. , 2001; Salas et al. , 1992). The key to influential leadership rests on Bass and Avolio (1994) 4 Is, which is made of three factors (Avolio and Yammarino, 2002; Avolio et al, 1999; Bass, 1988; Bycio et al, 1995).

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