Skills required for sustainable employment
View(s):Most governments and businesses around the world face a huge challenge; high levels of unemployment and a shortage of job seekers with critical skills, according to human resources specialist Dinesh Weerakody.
Speaking at the recently concluded 26th Annual Conference and National APEX Awards 2013 organized by the Organisation of Professional Associations of Sri Lanka(OPA) themed ‘Human Capital Towards 20203f, Mr. Weerakkody, also Chairman-Commercial Bank of Ceylon, asked what should a country do to successfully move its young people from education to employment?.
What are the challenges and what are the talent interventions that work well and how can these interventions be scaled up for maximum impact? He pointed out that the twin crises of a shortage of jobs and a shortage of skills need to take into account another key shortage: the lack of proper data and understanding of the real requirements of all the key stakeholders involved.
“This deficiency makes it difficult to even start to understand which skills are required for sustainable employment, what practices are the most promising in training youth to become and remain productive employees during their working life, and how to identify the skills programs that can deliver the best results. The knowledge gap about education-to-employment regarding school-system reform and higher education reform remains a big challenge for the country”.
Going forward he said, the two key questions that must be answered by all key stakeholders today is what skills does “our” talent pool need now and in the future and how should skills training be delivered?
Mr. Weerakkody observed that there are four key stakeholders in this education- to -employment journey. Namely the state, employers, educators and the people. As each stakeholder seeks to do what is best to further his or her interest, the education-to-employment highway becomes particularly messy, with everyone pushing ahead with little regard to the aspiration of each other in the game. “For example, there are many different views among the stakeholders on how our graduates should be made ready to succeed in entry-level positions. In Sri Lanka, there are wide gaps between the opinions of providers and employers. Opinions on the level of preparedness differ depending not only on who is answering the question, but also on what economic sector they represent and the opportunities in the market” he added.
“If you ask employers and education providers for their assessments of the importance of individual skills and their evaluation of general competency of the young people they hire in regard to the skills. Often their responses highlight important skills like, self-management, team working, business and customer awareness, problem solving, communication and application of information technology, compared with education providers and the state, the employers are much clearer in their ranking of the relative importance of various skills. Employers cite teamwork, work ethic and communication as the most important skills; education providers also give similar weights, he said. Employers however often note a mismatch between what they need and what they are seeing; they rank the competence of new hires in each of the key skills lower than the importance they give it, he said. Also, in some skills, there is a wide gap between the perceptions of employers and education providers on the real competency requirements of new hires. The difference is particularly glaring in theoretical and hands-on training, problem solving, and computer literacy. Another gap that exist is to do with the building of the competency levels in these required skills; in this case, it is often due to the lack of practical, hands-on learning as an effective approach to training.
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