High Schools That Work

What Employers Want

Global competition is forcing employers to search for new, more efficient ways to improve production, reduce costs and create new products. To accomplish these goals, employers must develop a comprehensive, broadly based system of standards that defines the knowledge and skills employees need. Standards enable the public and private sectors to pursue several common interests such as:

communicating the requirements of the modern workplace to all interested parties;

promoting high-performance workplace practices to improve the quality of goods and services;

facilitating lifelong learning to raise workers’ skills, thus increasing worker security within a mobile labor market; and

improving the quality and accountability of education and training programs to produce better-prepared workers.

In response to the need for skill standards, in 1992-93 the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Labor began more than 20 pilot projects to develop voluntary skill standards for several major business and industrial areas¹. Many business and industrial groups have helped to develop skill standards within those and other industries. By focusing on expected competencies, it is possible to build flexible, customer-oriented curricula across various levels of education and training systems that are strengthened by work-based learning. These improvements will make it easier for people to pursue multiple career avenues and lifelong learning. Skill standards can be the best way for workers to know what is required in the workplace. Of course, there must be ongoing dialogue with all educators and employers involved if these standards are to remain current.

An analysis of some sets of skill standards that employers have developed or directed gives an idea of what employers want. According to this analysis, they want employees who have not only occupation-specific skills but also basic academic, technical and human-relations skills that may apply to many occupations. The following are categories of skills and the approximate percentages that each category represents in the sets of skill standards for manufacturing² and heating, air conditioning and refrigeration technician³:

Core knowledge and skills: 24 percent to 30 percent

Mathematics, measurement, language arts, teamwork, science, etc.

Core workplace skills: 30 percent to 33 percent
Health and safety, problem-solving, quality assurance, blueprint-reading, electrical principles, etc.

Occupation-specific skills: 27 percent to 36 percent
Manufacturing fundamentals, process control, business planning and operations, computer usage, etc.

Work-force behavior skills: 18 percent to 19 percent
Learning skills, professionalism, business ethics, business environmental understanding, etc.

The set of skill standards for entry-level welder⁴ indicates somewhat smaller percentages for core knowledge, core workplace skills and workplace behavior skills but larger percentages for occupation-specific skills.

¹ Occupational Skill Standards Projects — 1992
Federal Program Officer: Carolyn S. Lee (202) 260-9576

² National Coalition for Advanced Manufacturing
1201 New York Ave. N.W., Suite 725, Washington, DC 20005-3917

³ V-TECS, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools,
1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, GA 30033-4097

⁴ American Welding Society, 550 N.W. LeJune Road, Miami, FL 33126