24 April 2008
Basic skills: a risk to business performance
Employees falling down on the "3 Rs".
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has just published the results of a new annual audit of the nation’s skills, "CBI/Edexcel Education & Skills Survey 2008". The audit says a lack of basic reading, writing and simple arithmetic ability is still a major cause for concern.
Just over half the employers from the 735 firms surveyed – employing 1.7 million people between them – lack confidence in finding enough people with the right skills for their business.
Around a quarter of employers are investing in remedial literacy and numeracy training.
Basic skills in short supply
Employers say literacy problems include not being able to write in sentences, spell correctly or use accurate grammar. For numeracy, the key issue is the inability to spot simple errors or rogue numbers.
Poor basic skills are seriously impacting customer service according to two-fifths of employers and lowering productivity say a third. As a result, around a quarter of employers are investing in remedial literacy and numeracy training.
Employers also see IT skills as weak, with over half concerned about employees’ ability to use computers. John Cridland, deputy director-general, CBI, says, "Being skilled is all-the-more important in an increasingly global economy.”
Graduates need "soft" skills
He says the survey is also an alarm call to students and universities, “who may be surprised by just how much employers value the ‘softer’ skills that make people more employable. This means being a good team-worker, communicator and problem-solver is vital and getting work experience goes a long way with a future employer."
The CBI says the current 32% of jobs requiring degree-level education is likely to grow, as the UK continues towards an economy built on value-added services, high-tech and knowledge-based firms.
Employers want graduates who can communicate well and work as part of a team. 86% of employers ranked positive attitude and “employability” top – more important than the degree subject or result. They want people skilled in team-working, communication, business awareness, self-management and problem-solving.
Wake-up call for all
Survey sponsor Edexcel's managing director, Jerry Jarvis, says a skills review published over a year ago provides a wake-up call for us all. “It showed that a third of UK adults do not hold a basic school-leaving qualification – that’s double the proportion in Germany. It also drew into focus that whilst the UK is producing 250,000 graduates every year, China and India are producing 4 million.”
Cambridge University research published in January 2008 found that failure to teach children the "3 Rs" at a young age is damaging the British economy and resulting in productivity lags as high as 25%, behind countries such as Germany and France.
Employers want graduates who can communicate well and work as part of a team.
Have your say
How literate is your workplace? Have you needed to dumb-down communication to reach your entire workforce – maybe your organization is also investing in basic skills education?
While basic skills lack will account for a significant proportion of the survey findings – have you experienced a change in communication style? Text-speak is washing into our organizations with its abbreviations, love of lower case, abhorrence of punctuation and random spelling.
How much does this new style contribute to employers views that employees can’t spell or construct proper sentences. The Hub recently received one message “Message sent from my BlackBerry. Please excuse typos.”
Discuss these issues with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.
Other recommendations:
A communicator's guide to Generation Y
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