Chapter 2: Changing Skills Needs
The sectoral profile that we have seen in recent years (in common with most developed countries) will continue to change for the foreseeable future: the services sector will increase in relative importance, while ‘traditional’ manufacturing and agriculture will continue to decline. This shift to services poses a productivity challenge for policymakers and for enterprise.
At occupational level, the greatest increases in employment are expected to occur in the ‘professional’, ‘associate professional’ and ‘personal & service’ groupings.
All occupations are becoming more knowledge-intensive, with a corresponding rise in the requirement for qualifications and technical skills. Employees will be required to acquire a range of generic and transferable skills and attitudes. In most cases, work is becoming less routine, with a requirement for flexibility, continuous learning, and individual initiative and judgement.
The Expert Group concludes that the following should be included in a generic skills portfolio:
- Basic/fundamental skills — such as literacy, numeracy, IT literacy;
- People-related skills — such as communication, interpersonal, team-working and customer-service skills; and
- Conceptual/thinking skills — such as collecting and organising information, problem-solving, planning and organising, learning-to-learn skills, innovation and creativity skills, systematic thinking.
