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The nature of employability skills: empirical evidence from S ingapore
Author(s) -
Sung Johnny,
Ng Michael Chi Man,
Loke Fiona,
Ramos Catherine
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
international journal of training and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.558
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1468-2419
pISSN - 1360-3736
DOI - 10.1111/ijtd.12008
Subject(s) - employability , context (archaeology) , soft skills , workforce , psychology , skills management , business , public relations , pedagogy , economics , social psychology , political science , economic growth , paleontology , biology
This paper concerns the changing nature of employability skills, moving from the original life skills or basic skills concepts to the increasingly work‐oriented interpretation. The early concept of employability skills linked employability skills to job readiness and holding down employment. However, the work‐oriented focus is increasingly linking the impact of employability skills to organizational (or performance) outcomes, which in turn are linked to workers' career mobility and wage gains. This paper makes use of recent skills utilization data in S ingapore to map out the relationship between employability skills and mobility. It shows that employability skills in S ingapore are increasingly job context related, going beyond just holding down a job. As such, mobility is likely to be influenced by the extent to which employability skills are shared between industries. Recognition of the context‐related nature of employability skills has led to the modification of workforce development training in S ingapore in order to meet the needs for greater employability skills effectiveness through ‘contextualized’ training provision.