Skills, Skills and More Skills

In the previous blog, I explored Essential Skills, and how literacy skills and Essential Skills correlate. (Just in case you need the reminder, Essential Skills are the application of literacy skills to a workplace task.) Currently in our boom-bust northwest, there is much promise about Essential Skills training, testing and upskilling. The faster the better – jobs are here today ready and waiting for skilled workers. What skills and what work? Apparently essential skills for essential work! But first there is one more skill area we need to explore, one that is also often discussed in the world of work: transferable skills.

 

Transferable skills are skills that transfer from one job to another or one workplace to another. Communication with fellow workers and the ability to work with others to problem solve are the types of skills that can be used in most workplaces. They are very transferable. While operating a specific piece of equipment may not be highly transferable, the skills around heavy equipment operation are very transferable. If someone has operated one type of equipment, other types are easier to learn, because the skills around the task do transfer.

 

The trick to transferable skills is understanding that you hold those skills, how you use them and how you can further develop your transferable skills. You might think of transferable skills as skills you keep when you move from one job to another: you own your transferable skills. Then, when you are looking for a new job, you need to be able to articulate the transferable skills you have so others understand, or have an employer who can do the translation for you when you apply for a job. Either way, most people, whether they realize it or not, hold transferable skills that will allow them to work in a variety of workplaces.

To see how Essential Skills, literacy and transferable skills all come into play with a workplace task, consider this example:

A worker needs to mix Chemical A with water. He uses a bucket with a mark on it and fills Chemical A to the line, then tops it up with water. This makes the task easy to learn for the non-skilled worker.

Q.  What happens when the special bucket goes missing? What happens if Chemical A starts being produced in different concentrations?

A.   If the workers have the literacy and Essential Skills required for the task, they can use their math skills and an appropriate liquid measuring tool to figure out the required concentration. Those same math skills can also be applied to other workplace tasks.

 

The literacy and Essential Skills are what is referred to as “transferable skills”. If we go back to using the special bucket, and the worker then transfers to another job, he will not have a transferable skill, the foundational understanding because he relied on the line on the bucket.

 

In best practice, Essential Skills are embedded in on-the-job training. They include the specific pieces of the actual task, but also the literacy foundations behind the task. In this case, the workers involved would learn about chemical concentrations and the calculations required for specific concentrations. The required formulas might be posted somewhere, along with a table indicating amounts related to various dilutions. While some days the task may look like “fill to the line” the workers have the skills and supports for when the bucket goes missing or the concentration changes. Even more importantly, they would also understand why it was important to ensure the concentrations were correct.

 

In another example, truck drivers with low level literacy skills were able to competently complete their tasks, on most days. As soon as there was a new customer, a detour or a similar change, they were no longer able to do the job well. They did not have the basic skills and critical thinking required to deal with the change, resulting in accidents, late shipments and safety violations.

 

Literacy, Essential Skills and transferable skills are all hugely important for the workforce. They have been referred to as “the elephant in the room” when it comes to workplace accidents. (The bucket disappears.) You might also hear that transferable skills are essential, or, that “literacy is the essential skill” as those skills can then be applied to any workplace task. The skills can all be effectively taught or mentored, some can be assessed and perhaps there are some that can be accurately tested; ask anyone with experience in the literacy field and you will hear that literacy, Essential Skills and transferable skills are all integral to a skilled workforce. But, and this is a big BUT, there are no shortcuts; there is no quick fix.