Background
Why are social and emotional skills essential in the workplace?
“ A degree alone is not enough. Employers are looking for more than just technical skills and knowledge of a degree discipline. They particularly value skills such as communication, teamworking and problem solving. Job applicants who can demonstrate that they have developed these skills will have a real advantage.”
Digby Jones, Director-General, Confederation of British Industry, Forward to Prospects Directory 2004/5
Surveys of employers have for many years shown that non-cognitive or social and emotional skills are the qualities they most want from young people coming out of the education system, and employers increasingly use these characteristics, rather than qualifications, to screen applicants. In the 2004 Enterprise survey, of 20,000 employers in the UK, employers were most worried about lack of skills such as customer handling, problem solving and team working. In fact research has shown that non-cognitive skills had more correlation with success in the labour market than cognitive skills, IQ and formal qualifications (Lunha et al, 2005).
In many large British cities, there is mounting evidence that the key problem is no longer getting into universities or problems with literacy, numeracy and IT skills. Rather, the problems are often due to poor social and emotional skills, which are sometimes labelled non-cognitive skills. It is these that enable 16-year-olds to work with others, and to have the motivation to work with others.
2.6.1 Reading