Back to School: The skills you need to succeed

Written by Hannah Leiper

As our schools, universities and colleges go back to their daily grind, the ELBA education team have been thinking about the skills that we all may need to succeed this year. Here at ELBA, we know that all of our business partners play a huge role in helping our students gain the skills that they need to progress into the careers that they deserve. We strive to fulfill the statistic that if a young person has four or more employer engagements, they are five times less likely to become not in education, employment or training (NEET).

You may be wondering how we do this? The answer… our Employability Competencies. The education team take 8 core values to every workshop and student engagement that we do. Business awareness and aspirations, communication, teamwork, resilience, problem solving, leadership and self management. We have compared these to the competencies used at Skills Builder, who also look at the skills needed for the future of work, to ensure that we are staying ahead of the curve. Although over the years, the importance of these skills will change, they are currently some of the fundamental skills for a young person to succeed in the ever changing world.

Now to see it from the other side. With the 4th Industrial Revolution in sight do companies still have the skills they need to succeed? Deloitte recently published an article about how leaders are preparing for the 4IR. Although in previous years leaders thought they were doing enough to upskill their staff to get prepared for the 4IR, leaders are seeing a bigger skills gap now more than ever, which is making them more doubtful. Companies are also now looking more at ‘societal impact’ as a way of measuring if their business is performing above financial performance and customer or employee satisfaction. Here at ELBA, we believe that your societal impact can also help employers to build their own skills they need for the future of work and puts everyone in a win win situation. 

So as we embark on yet another busy education year, we urge you to think, what am I doing with the skills I have? Can I share my skills with others to help them grow, whilst also enhancing mine? And most importantly what are the skills that I need to succeed in the future?