Medio perceptual

The fourth important set of boundaries are those between skill and certain other determinants of effectiveness in the workplace which are not normally associated with individual learning, e.g. aspects of personality and corporate culture. As Grugulis, Warhurst and Keep (2004: 6-7) argue:

One of the most fundamental changes that has [sic] taken place over the last two decades has been the growing tendency to label what in earlier times would have been seen by most as personal characteristics, attitudes, character traits, or predispositions as skills… It is not that employers in times past have not wanted such qualities… It is just that managers then would not have thought of these as skills per se… [B]y the early 1980s employers had moved to describing

behavioural characteristics such as reliability, stability of work record, and responsibility… under the banner of skill, and a lack of job candidates possessing such qualities constituted, from an employers’ perspective, a skill shortage. Today these qualities… are indeed believed to be skills (usually generic) and are

increasingly treated as such by policy-makers. Borghans, Green and Mayhew (2001: 376) write:

A generation ago, the ‘unskilled’ manual worker might have needed to possess strength, stamina and fortitude. These attributes were not described as skills. Today the junior salesperson or call centre employee needs a different set of

attributes – for example those necessary to communicate effectively with customers and to work well in a team. These are now described as skills and are embedded in many governments’ definitions of “core” skills… this particular development is capable of causing serious confusion, because it implies that the rhetoric of policy (the high skills vision, the knowledge economy) could turn out to mean very different things to different people.

Up to a point, this issue is the same as that raised earlier about the boundary between learned skills and innate attributes. The distinctive issue arises when the definition of “skills” is extended to include forms of behaviour which were once thought of as being outcomes of a well-managed, well-functioning organisation. This is most apparent in a growing view of commitment and motivation as aspects of skill (Grugulis et al 2004: 12). In a survey of Australian employers carried out by the NCVER in 2001, the “skill” most commonly reported as “extremely important” or “very important” was “positive attitude toward work” (92%), followed closely by “professional approach to work” (90%) (Allen Consulting 2006: 54). When asked about the skills they found hardest to recruit, 51% of Victorian employers who responded to a survey conducted in 2005 for the Australian Industry Group (Allen Consulting 2006: 53) nominated “having a positive attitude to work” and 38% “pride in one’s own work” – though interestingly, these things were described in the actual questionnaire as attributes.

A positive explanation for this shift is that developments in industry and the labour market since the late 1970s have led to a broader redefinition of skills across the board, reflecting a less stable technological, organisational and market environment and a consequent rise in the importance of adaptive and interactive capabilities, which are more likely to provide a return on investments in skilling in an uncertain future than the technical skills which were traditionally the focus of the formal training system (Capper 1999: 9). Lowry et al, in their interviews with representative employers about future trends in industry requirements for skill, were told that “the ability to gain a skill set, and then shed that as and when necessary so as to learn a new skill set is a crucial part of being in the electrical trades” (2008: 28). It has become increasingly common for employers to argue in their formal representations to government that they are perfectly willing to spend their own money to train their

employees in the technical skills their business requires, so long as someone else (i.e. the public education/training system) can provide them with recruits who have the “right” attitudes.

An alternative explanation is that of Grugulis et al (2004: 7) who suggest that this change may indicate a growing tendency for employers to redefine aspects of organisational health as skills brought to the workplace by individual recruits, and to see the remedy not in a review of their own work organisation and managerial style, but rather in an improvement in the “output” of the public training system. In other words, the demands for

“employability” skills signal a shift of responsibility away from corporate management to the state. If this view is correct, the danger is that skilling as an input to the economy will be expected to meet needs which it cannot possibly satisfy, and which can ultimately be resolved only by business adjusting its human resources strategies to the distinctive strengths as well as the perceived failings of a new generation of workforce entrants. If governments try to satisfy such demands, increasing amounts of public expenditure will be directed into developing a supply of “skills” which would have developed anyway as a normal part of socialisation into the workforce, while more fundamental and potentially tractable problems remain neglected (Keep, Mayhew and Payne 2006: 552).

Like the other boundary issues covered here, this is one of degree rather than an either-or matter. At one level it will come down to the criterion mentioned above, namely which of these attitudes or behaviours are the kind of thing that can be learned. On a more practical level, the important issue for governments in particular may be which of them can be effectively and purposively taught through pre-employment training. However, this latter issue does not affect their inclusion in the definition of skill for the purposes of this research.

It should be recognised that the broader boundary issue is a matter of negotiation and adjustment which is still actively in progress. Given its importance to national skilling strategy, it matters to keep an open mind and not pre-empt the outcome by defining certain things as non-skill which will not be tracked. An inclusive and agnostic approach is needed to develop a metric which can capture at least the evolving consensus between contending parties – in particular, between employers and those who work for them. So long as the full picture can be captured and tracked through the full adjustment process, further analyses will be possible and appropriate to examine how this shifting definition of skill has affected the dynamic of the NSS.