What employability skills should training providers be offering?

Employability skills are a growing topic of conversation for employers amidst the shift towards automation, and the resulting demand for highly-skilled employees.

What employability skills should training providers be offering?

City & Guilds’ analysis of Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) research undertaken across England uncovered that almost every employer in every LSIP region highlighted employability skills as a key concern.

Providers have a central role in delivering employability skills, and the culture the learners experience during their off-the-job training will reinforce necessary future skills like punctuality, attitude and reliability.

The common issue is that ‘employability’ serves as a catch-all description for a wide variety of behavioural skills. These can include communication, resilience, emotional intelligence, problem solving, critical thinking and more. 

Such a broad definition makes it difficult for providers to determine which specific skills to focus on in delivery – and for employers to pinpoint exactly what they want to see from recruits. 

Here are the employability skills that are most in demand by today’s employers, and the capabilities that will be indispensable in the near future.

Current employability skills needs

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, reports that HR decision makers considered these skills the most important to business success:

• Problem-solving

• Collaboration

• Resilience

• Creativity

• Emotional intelligence

Reliability, literacy and numeracy were also highlighted as wishlist skills for employers. As one business owner put it, in response to the planned Advanced British Standard: “Do these new qualifications actually give us as employers recruits who can read, write, add up and get out of bed in the morning?” 

Some employability skills map conveniently to existing fundamental aspects of off-the-job (OTJ) training. 

They can go hand-in-hand with literacy, for example, by having learners analyse job descriptions and discuss which ‘soft’ skills would be most important for those roles. Learners can also develop communication skills through presentations, mock interviews or simulated workplace situations like meetings. 

Impactful employability skills can also be delivered outside of traditional teaching methods. Working alongside local employers in talks or workshops will help learners to understand how important these skills will be in their careers, and how they will use them in real workplaces.

Skills for the future

The current skills shortage is being exacerbated by the rate at which skills needs are evolving. 

As cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent, so will the need for employees who can work with those technologies effectively in their jobs – and understand how the wider landscape has been affected, too.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is already an in-demand skill, and as AI-generated content becomes more commonplace, using these skills to evaluate the reliability of information at hand will be crucial.

Learners will need to understand that information produced by AI tools is often flawed. The essential skill will be in spotting information which might be inaccurate, and how to do their own research to verify it. 

Understanding bias

Central to these critical evaluation skills will be overcoming the bias that is inherent in AI models.

Learners will need to have an underpinning understanding of the social forces that have resulted in these biases, in order to identify when they might be affecting AI outputs. 

For example, a lack of representative data can lead to inaccurate models being used in healthcare and education, producing incorrect and biassed outcomes which perpetuate inequality.

Outside of working with new technology, awareness of these biases will prove a valuable employability skill as workplaces strive for greater inclusivity.

Using data ethically

Now that processing and analysing data is easier than ever thanks to large language models (LLMs), collecting and handling data ethically is an essential employability skill. 

Understanding privacy and security should be top of the agenda, especially in sectors like finance and healthcare which handle sensitive and identifiable data. For lower-risk applications like marketing, providers should highlight the balance between personalised and intrusive communications.

Managing employer expectations

Employers are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction with the way the skills system embeds employability alongside technical competencies. 

But training providers can’t produce employment-ready learners on their own; certain skills can only be developed in a workplace context. Fostering good relationships with employers will demonstrate to them that some elements must be gained through on-the-job experience, like shadowing or mentoring by senior staff.

This communication will also help deconstruct the barriers between employer expectations and the learners entering the workforce. 

City & Guilds identified that certain high-level skills like project management or high-level planning are frequently expected by employers, but cannot be gained without real day-to-day workplace experience and real responsibilities. 

Providers have an opportunity to foster more realistic expectations, and take a collaborative approach to employability that meets the needs of learners and employers.

Deliver quality employability training with Bud

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Providers across the UK trust our platform to provide an efficient and seamless experience for learners, trainers and employers, freeing up time to focus on quality delivery.

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