SKILLS & TRAINING
FEATURE
Understand the skills
needed for the world of work
By Daniel Gray, Regional Manager East Midlands at ThinkForwardUK
Soft skills are no longer readily available
When employers survey the labour market, particularly young people, they often lament the lack of ‘softer skills’ that were once readily available to businesses in the cohort of young people leaving school. Added to this is the sobering thought that the current
Year 10s (fifteen-year-olds) may well be working in roles that do not yet exist. For example, how many of us just five years ago would have thought that a company would need a social media analyst or an online community manager? Five years is the amount of time we spend in secondary
education – seven if we go to college or sixth form and ten if we go to university. How can we design an education system that is able to prepare young people for the workplace, including for roles that haven’t yet been invented? And if those young people come from disadvantaged
backgrounds with less support and fewer opportunities than their fellow students – and future competitors for jobs
- what more needs to be done to ensure they too have the right skills and experiences to succeed? A good starting point would be to look at the bigger
picture of what makes companies successful. There are numerous Ted Talks and business gurus who wax lyrical about the myriad ways that executives and business owners can ‘find their way’. There are many entrepreneurs who will tell you on LinkedIn that coaching and motivating your staff is the critical success factor in business. While some or all of these people may be right, there are
several common themes that pop up time and time again as advice to those who want to recruit the right people and manage their staff effectively. Successful companies are adaptable and innovative and companies that thrive are resilient, organised, communicate well both internally and externally and are receptive to change. ThinkForward is a charity that works with the most disadvantaged young people to support them
‘How can we design an education system that is able to prepare young people for the workplace, including for roles that haven’t yet been invented?’
business network July/August 2018 43
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