Employability Skills

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and the Business Council of Australia (BCA) have undertaken a major exercise to discover what employers really look for in workers in order to meet their current and future skills needs.

Why?

We all know the nature of work is changing.  The profile of a ‘typical’ employee or self-employed worker is different for this generation.  Suitable staff are crucial to business success.  Educators must know how to prepare students or the realities of the workplace.

Employability skills for the purposes of the project were defined as “skills required not only to gain employment, but also to progress within an enterprise so as to achieve one’s potential and contribute successfully to enterprise strategic directions”.

The outcomes of this project tell us that employers today want more than technical skills.  They select staff that can demonstrate a variety of social and personal attributes as well as the ability to learn technical skills.

Specific characteristics were identified in the project which has powerful implications for educators preparing students for the workplace of today and tomorrow. 

An Employability Skills Framework has been developed for use at all education levels – school, vocational education and training (VET) and tertiary. 

The framework can also be used as a guide for teachers and training providers, as a self-assessment tool for job seekers, by existing workers to improve their career potential and by recruiters and HR professionals.  The framework can be applied to entry level or existing workers in all industries.

To view Employability Skills Framework scroll down this page

ACCI acknowledges support from the commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) and the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) to undertake this project.

Employability Skills Framework

Personal Attributes that contribute to overall employability
  1. Loyalty
  2. Commitment
  3. Honesty and Integrity
  4. Enthusiasm
  5. Reliability
  6. Personal Presentation
  7. Common sense
  8. Positive self esteem
  9. A sense of humour
  10. A balanced attitude to work and home life
  11. An ability to deal with pressure
  12. Motivation
  13. Adaptability
SKILL ELEMENT – (facets of the skill that employers identified as important, noting that the mix and priority of these facets would vary from job to job)
Communication
That contributes to productive and harmonious relations across employees and customers
  1. Listening and understanding
  2. Speaking clearly and directly
  3. Writing to the needs of the audience
  4. Negotiating responsively
  5. Reading independently
  6. Empathising
  7. Speaking and writing in languages other than English
  8. Using numeracy
  9. Understanding the needs of internal and external customers
  10. Persuading effectively
  11. Establishing and using networks
  12. Being assertive
  13. Sharing information
Team Work
That contributes to productive working relationships and outcomes
  1. Working across different ages and irrespective of gender, race, religion or political persuasion
  2. Working as an individual and as a member of a team
  3. Knowing how to define a role as part of a team
  4. Applying team work to a range of situations e.g. futures planning, crisis problem solving
  5. Identifying the strengths of the team members
  6. Coaching and mentoring skills including giving feedback
Problem Solving
That contributes to productive outcomes
  1. Developing creative, innovative solutions
  2. Developing practical solutions
  3. Showing independence and initiative in identifying problems and solving them
  4. Solving problems in teams
  5. Applying a range of strategies to problem solving
  6. Using mathematics including budgeting and financial management to solve problems
  7. Applying problem solving strategies across a range of areas
  8. Testing assumptions taking the context of data and circumstances into account
  9. Resolving customer concerns in relation to complex projects issues
Self Management
That contributes to employee satisfaction and growth
  1. Having a personal vision and goals
  2. Evaluating and monitoring own performance
  3. Having knowledge and confidence in own ideas and visions
  4. Articulating own ideas and visions
  5. Taking responsibility
Planning and organizing
That contributes to long and short term strategic planning
  1. Managing time and priorities – setting time lines, co-ordinating tasks for self and with others
  2. Being resourceful
  3. Taking initiative and making decisions
  4. Adapting resource allocations to cope with contingencies
  5. Establishing clear project goals and deliverables
  6. Allocating people and other resources to tasks
  7. Planning the use of resources including time management
  8. Participates in continuous improvement and planning processes
  9. Developing a vision and a proactive plan to accompany it
  10. Predicting – weighing up risk, evaluate alternatives and apply evaluation criteria
  11. Collecting, analyzing and organizing information
  12. Understanding basic business systems and their relationships
TechnologyThat contributes to effective execution of tasks
  1. Having a range of basic IT skills
  2. Applying IT as a management tool
  3. Using IT to organise data
  4. Being willing to learn new IT skills
  5. Having the OHS knowledge to apply technology
  6. Having the physical capacity to apply technology e.g. manual dexterity
Learning
That contributes to ongoing improvement and expansion in employee and company operations and outcomes
  1. Managing own learning
  2. Contributing to the learning community at the workplace
  3. Using a range of mediums to learn – mentoring, peer support and networking, IT courses
  4. Applying learning to ‘technical’ issues (e.g. learning about products) and ‘people’ issues (e.g. interpersonal and cultural aspects of work)
  5. Having enthusiasm for ongoing learning
  6. Being willing to learn in any setting – on and off the job
  7. Being open to new ideas and techniques
  8. Being prepared to invest time and effort in learning new skills
  9. Acknowledging the need to learn in order to accommodate change
Initiative and enterprise
That contribute to innovative outcomes
  1. Adapting to new situations
  2. Developing a strategic, creative, long term vision
  3. Being creative
  4. Identifying opportunities not obvious to others
  5. Translating ideas into action
  6. Generating a range of options
  7. Initiating innovative solutions

Extract from Employability Skills for the Future, 2002