Generic Employability Skills

Generic employability skills comprise a suite of ‘transferable’ skills which are independent of the occupational sectors and organisations in which individuals work, and which contribute to an individual’s overall employability by enhancing their capacity to adapt, learn and work independently. These skills are required not only to gain employment but also to progress within an organisation.

Generic employability skills are important because jobs today require flexibility, initiative and the ability to undertake many different tasks. They are not as narrowly prescribed and defined as in the past and generally they are more service oriented, making information and social skills increasingly important.

This is the full report of a study of the teaching, learning and assessment of generic employability skills in the South West of England, which was undertaken by Professor David Greatbatch and Peter Lewis at the Centre for Developing and Evaluating Lifelong Learning at the University of Nottingham in collaboration with the South West Skills and Learning Intelligence Module at the University of Exeter.

The aim of the project was to identify effective models of teaching, learning and assessment of generic employability skills in the South West and to identify how these are employed in schools, further and higher education, work-based learning and others supporting young people.

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Full report (PDF, 0.4MB)

Guide (PDF, 0.9MB)