It’s good news for anyone concerned about the soft skills deficit…isn’t it?
Major organisations, including McDonalds, CBI, National Youth Agency, LearnDirect and Barclays, as well as entrepreneur James Caan, are calling for these crucial skills to be recognised and promoted. This initiative comes along with the message that the current soft skills deficit will cost the UK around £88 billion per year.
Given the cost implication, it is surprising that it’s taken so long for these skills to be on the business agenda…
Oh, they have been on the agenda.
For a while.
Let’s start at 2011…for example, with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development report…
Then in 2012 a group headed by Adecco, Cisco, Deloitte and other heavy hitters, urged government to take this “real and pressing” issue seriously…
Research by Ernst & Young in 2013 showed that soft skills have a significant impact on a company’s performance…
And last year, 50% of the 3000 organisations who took part in research by the British Chambers of Commerce, said graduates lack the necessary soft skills for today’s workplace.
Yes, soft skills require a re-think, a paradigm-shift, a different perspective. They don’t behave like the ‘hard’ skills that our education system was designed to teach.
But they’re not going away.
So the sooner they’re taken seriously the better.
Fingers crossed for Big Mac and the gang!
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Good to see everything put together here, perhaps add in the All Party Parliamentary Group for Micro Businesses report ‘An Education System for for an Entrepreneur’ and the Quality Assurance Agency’s Guidance for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education? Lots and lots of common ground here – especially as creativity and innovation are central aspects:
http://www.enterprise.ac.uk/index.php/news/item/402-entrepreneurs-and-educators-agree-new-report-calls-for-better-integration-of-entrepreneur-skills-at-all-levels-of-education
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/enterprise-entrepreneurship-guidance.pdf