PBL – Trigger 1
Learning Objectives:
- What kind of skills and competencies business are looking for?
- What teaching methods schools have to offer to meet the business expectations?
- How do you keep up your motivation to stand up?
Keywords:
Experience, Business competencies, Professional identity, Motivation, Education, Skills
Introduction
In this research I am ultimately looking for answers to our group’s first trigger that is: ”What leads to to employability?”. The question itself led to many sub-questions that we defined as our three learning objectives. (found from above). I think it is easier to try to provide answers to the main problem after diving deeper to this topic with objectives.
This topic is important to current students, educational systems, job-seekers and professionals. The business expectations and labor markets are constantly changing and developing so it is an interesting and challenging task to find out what actually leads to employability, not only now, but in the future as well.
- What kind of skills and competencies businesses are looking for?
Since it is hard to predict what kind of job titles there will be in the future it may be easier to focus on the skills and competencies that are required form the individuals and teams in a future business world. Due to an increasing life expectancy, the careers are getting longer, so that worker’s need to get more adaptable to work with different generations and ideologies. Also, that can mean that individuals can increase their employability value by having multiple careers and educations due to a longer careers and self-development time. That can also create more competition in a labor market.(IFTF, Davies A., Fidler D. & Gorbis M 2011, 1-2.)
The research article “Future work skills 2020” mentions six drivers of change that are relevant for reshaping the workforce landscape and defining some of the future work skills. These are such as extreme longevity, rise of smart machines & systems, computational world, new media ecology, super structed organizations and globally connected world.(IFTF & Davies A & al., 2011, 3-5.)
Extreme longevity will affect in a way that the global lifespans are getting longer. Therefore, the people’s careers and educations will change to have more diversity. This can offer the organizations more options and resources to solve problems for example, when future employees have more diversity in backgrounds.(IFTF & Davies A. & al., 2011, 3.)
Rise of smart machines and systems brings more automation to the work places by robots and machines. This can cause humans to be able to focus more on the work tasks that they are good at. For example, some creative or complicated tasks that requires good team work, – and social skills are still skills that humans are uniquely better at than machines. The automatization and working with machines require the adaptability skills from humans to keep up to date with new technological tools in a working space.(IFTF & Davies A. & al., 2011, 3.)
Computational world and new media ecology offer many new technological advantages to the organizations and that means that varies abilities to work and interact with data and new multimedia tech is required. Also, because of the high amount of data available for everyone all the time, people will need to learn to be more critical and observative what comes to the information that can easily change in a day. The new social technologies from different fields can lead to more innovative approaches to create constantly new tools for training and working. This is called as superstructed organizations.(IFTF, Davies A & al., 2011, 4-5.)
In order to companies to grow bigger and more productive it is important for them, and individuals to connect to the world globally. This leads again to more diversity, expanding the perspectives and operations world widely, remaining businesses competitive.(IFTF, Davies A. & al., 2011, 5.)
There are mentioned ten most critical skills in the article. These skills are influenced from the drivers above. These skills are: sense making, social intelligence, novel and adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competency, computational thinking, new media literacy, transdisciplinary, design mindset, cognitive load management and virtual collaboration.(IFTF, Davies A & al., 2011, 8-12.)
Many of these skills above are highlighting the importance of human’s unique features that are not replaceable with machines. Such as higher thinking, emotional skills, collaborative skills, relationship building, novel thinking and so on… Concluding that even though the new technology may provide many tools and automation to organizations there are still variant of tasks that requires individual’s personal skills and are needed to achieve effective results in a business life. (IFTF, Davies A & al., 2011, 3-12.)
2. What teaching methods schools have to offer to meet the business expectations?
In today’s rapidly changing labor markets it can be difficult to keep the education up to date for the business expectations since it can take quite some time for the education systems to change and develop new tools and learning styles. It can be hard to predict what kind of skills and educational background organizations prefer when graduating since some people may take 3 to 6 years to study and then continue to the labor markets. That is why it is important to focus on the school’s point of view on how to provide the right teaching to the students for them later success in a working life.
In A. Puhakka’s research paper about ‘Employability and Finnish University Graduates’ it is argued that which are the most relevant skills that the students may need to learn in schools to meet the working life expectations. Puhakka states: “We analysed different skills usage in connection with the graduates’ current jobs with the help of 16 questions. The most needed skills and forms of knowledge for all graduates were the following: (1) problem-solving skills; (2) teamwork and social skills; (3) communication skills in Finnish; (4) information acquisition skills; and (5) organisation and cooperation skills.”.(Puhakka A. & Rautopuro J. & Tuominen V. 2010, 51.)
It is argued that to become employable for the labor markets the most useful skills taught could be the generic skills such as problem solving, language skills, teamwork and social skills instead of vocationally orientated and too specialized skills. Because of their multiple usage in an everyday business environment. However, Professionals had a slightly better employability compared to generalists. That is why it is important to remember that all kinds of sets of skills can be used in a different context and situations, therefore making different kind of knowledge valuable depending of the situation.(Puhakka A & al. 2010, 52-53.)
3. How do you keep up your motivation to stand up?
Motivation is a key aspect to have when it comes to working towards your goals and thrive to develop yourself. Developing yourself on the other hand can help you to stand out from the crowd. While lacking motivation, it can be difficult to cope even with the things that may seem simple to do, a school assignment or a job task. That’s why a fixed goal is one of the main creators of motivation. A goal can be something that inspires, for example curiosity, in a day to day life even when it is more difficult to find a motivation. Yet a fixed goal can be quite effective motivator because there is an actual goal that you want to achieve. For example, it can be reaching to a certain profession or become wealthy and successful.(Gannon F. 2007, 301.)
In goal setting theory of motivation by Locke, it is argued that there is a difference in the outcome depending on how you set your goals and how they are defined. “Evidence does exist that higher performance results when goals are well defined but challenging, as a successful outcome boosts the self esteem”.(Locke E. & Latham G. 2006, 265-268.)
Conclusions
Concluding the research I think there are many factors that can effect on what leads to employability. These can be combinations of certain skillsets and personal traits of individual when combined with the right employer that values these certain features. Networking, adaptability, right kind of education and experience are all great assets to have. Depending of the labor markets and fields, these might even be necessities that the employers require (because of the high combativeness). Yet it is equally important to constantly self-educate, reflect, be curious and set goals to help to motivate the progress of developing yourself to meet the changing business expectations.
References:
Gannon F. 2007, 301. Motivation. EMBO Reports VOL 8, no 4. European Molecular Biology Organization. https://www.embopress.org/doi/pdf/10.1038/sj.embor.7400949 .Accessed: 9 September 2019
The Institute for the Future (IFTF), Davies A, Fidler D, Gorbis M, 2011. Future Work Skills 2020. IFTF 124 University Avenue, 2nd Floor, Palo Alto, CA 94301 650.854.6322 https://haagahelia.sharepoint.com/sites/globba/coursematerials2/Basic%20Courses/IBU1LF101%20Introduction%20to%20International%20Business/Materials/Main%20Business%20Topics/HRM%20material/future_work_skills_2020.pdf .Accessed: 9 September 2019.
Locke, Edwin; Gary Latham (2006), ”New Directions in Goal-Setting Theory”, Association for Psychological Science 15 (5): 265-268 https://www.leadership-central.com/goal-setting-theory.html .Accessed: 9 September 2019.
Puhakka A. & Rautopuro J. & Tuominen V. 2010, Employability and Finnish University Graduates. European Educational Research Journal, Volume 9, Number 1, 2010. www.wwwords.eu/EERJ https://haagahelia.sharepoint.com/sites/globba/coursematerials2/Basic%20Courses/IBU1LF101%20Introduction%20to%20International%20Business/Materials/Assignments/Learning%20Diary/Employability%20and%20Finnish%20University%20Graduates%202010.pdf .Accessed: 9 September 2019.
pblconblog.video.blog 