Employers looking for communication skills and work ethic

Employers are placing much more emphasis on the soft skills of school leavers such as communication skills and work ethic than on literacy and numeracy, according to new research.

The latest CIPD/KPMG quarterly Labour Market Outlook, a survey of over 1,400 UK employers, shows that while a quarter of employers list literacy as one of the key attributes they are looking for when recruiting from the current crop of school leavers, and over a fifth list numeracy, the attributes that top the list are communication skills, work ethic – the basic desire to do a good job – and personality.

The report also reveals that when asked to assess the performance of school leavers at work, a third of employers believe that girls outperform boys, which compares with just 3% who find that the reverse is true. Although, 52% of employers report no difference in the quality of male and female school leavers.

Rebecca Clake, Organisation and Resourcing Adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, comments, “It has become almost an annual ritual to focus on the literacy and numeracy of school leavers – but our research shows employers want more focus on communication, interpersonal skills and developing a work ethic.

“These findings suggest that the education system might help close the ‘employability gap’ by seeking to introduce more oral-based tests and more work experience schemes. Such changes may benefit boys in particular who are seen as having weaker communication skills – which may explain why employers are more likely to rate girls more highly than boys at work after leaving school.

Key findings from the survey include:

The key attributes employers look for in school leaver recruits are communication skills (40% of employers rank this in their top three required attributes), work ethic (39%) and personality (32%). These rank higher than literacy (26%), numeracy (22%) and formal qualifications (25%).

Almost two-thirds of employers (64%) report no change in the quality of school leavers during the past five years. One in ten consider quality to have improved, citing improvements in qualifications and a more mature attitude to work. However, a higher proportion of employers (26%) indicate that quality has deteriorated, pointing to problems related to listening skills, numeracy, and attitudes to work.

Around half (52%) of employers report no difference in the quality of male and female school leavers. But the proportion rating females more highly than males (36%) greatly exceeds the proportion rating males more highly than females (3%).

Half of employers ranked improved interpersonal skills in their top three suggestions when asked what the education system might do to improve the employability of school leavers. This was followed by greater efforts to encourage young people to take responsibility (40%), improvements in communication skills (38%), and better discipline (32%).

Employers are more likely to stress the need for improvement in such intangible skills than in literacy (28%), numeracy (22%) and IT skills (19%).