People-related Skills Research Articles

An investigation into the soft skills required of potential building graduate employee for sustainable employment

This study investigated the soft skills that Building Technology Students need for sustainable employment in Building Construction Industry. The study answered four research questions and tested four null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted descriptive survey research design and was carried out in South-West, Nigeria. The population for the study was of 197 comprising of 159 employers from registered building construction industry and 38 building technology teachers from Building Technology Department in Polytechnics in South-West, Nigeria. There was no sampling for the study since the entire population was used. The instrument that was used for collecting data for the study was a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into two parts, I and II. Part I contains items that elicited the demographic information of the respondents while part II contains 62 soft skills items in four sections (A, B, C and D) on a five point likert-type rating scale option of Extremely Needed (EN),Somewhat Needed (SN), Neither Needed or Not Needed (NN), Somewhat Not Needed (SN) and Extremely Not Needed (EN) with a corresponding value of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively. The face validation of the instrument was carried out by five experts. The Cronbach alpha coefficient (∝) method was used to ascertain the internal consistency of the questionnaire items and it yielded an overall reliability coefficient of 0.88. Data generated from the administration of the questionnaire was analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) using mean and t-test statistics to answer the research questions and hypotheses respectively at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that personal-attribute skills, people-related skills, higher-order thinking skills and career-attribute skills are required by building technology students in Polytechnics for sustainable employment in building construction industry. Based on the findings of the study, appropriate conclusions and recommendations were made which include the integration of the identified soft skills into the curriculum of building technology programme in Polytechnic among others.

Modernizing the chemical engineering curriculum via a student-centered framework that promotes technical, professional, and technology expertise skills: The case of unit operations

The development of a comprehensive set of skills, including technical, professional, and technology expertise, is critical to succeeding in the increasingly competitive global job marketplace. We proposed to develop such skills in our junior students (third year) via a flipped-classroom approach, a PO-PBL problem, and interactive e-learning tools. The intervention was implemented in the core course of Unit Operations and led to an increase in the students’ perception of the development of teamwork and people-related skills. Despite the benefits of promoting student learning, our intervention revealed that we still need to conduct work to approach more robust peer-to-peer interactions and connectedness. In this regard, students showed a marked tendency to have superficial discussions, which reflected their inability to develop superior emotional connections with peers. This is critical to promote complex thinking and ideation as well as continued engagement with the course contents and will be the focus of our future work.

An Assessment Of Employabilty Skills Acquired By National Diploma Graduates Of Federal College Of Forestry In Nigeria

The main purpose of this study was to assess the acquisition of employability skills by Federal College of Forestry graduates in Nigeria.  The population for the study includes the National Diploma graduates of Federal College of Forestry, Ibadan. Snowball sampling techniques was used to select graduates that participated in this study. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The quantitative method used to collect data consisted of a 59 item questionnaire developed by the researcher. The questionnaire consisted of 5 aspects which include: technical/basic fundamental skills with reliability of (0.86), personal skills and attributes (0.92), communication skills (0.84), problem solving skills/mathematical skills (0.86) and people related skills (0.93). While the qualitative method used was semi-structured interviews. Descriptive statistics mean and standard deviation were used to analyse quantitative data and content analysis method was employed to analyse data from semi-structured interview.  According to the result, the combination of technical/basic fundamental skills, personal skills and attributes, communication skills, problem solving skills/mathematical skills, and people related skills is needed in order to improve students’ employability in the Labour market.  Hence, there is need for curriculum enhancement in Federal College of Forestry.

Managerial skills needed for academic library managers: The case of Iran

This survey investigates the extent to which Iranian academic library managers need managerial skills and the influence of their level of seniority on this need. The results revealed that, in general, managers' need for managerial skills is high especially “people related skills” over “analytical and self-related skills” and “task related skills”. Analysis of the mean scores of skills across three levels of managers shows that the middle level managers' need for managerial skills is higher than top managers and supervisors. Overall, most respondents ranked “creating organizational climate” as the skill most needed while few said they needed development for “counseling subordinates.”

Managerial skills needed for academic library managers: The case of Iran

This survey investigates the extent to which Iranian academic library managers need managerial skills and the influence of their level of seniority on this need. The results revealed that, in general, managers' need for managerial skills is high especially “people related skills” over “analytical and self-related skills” and “task related skills”. Analysis of the mean scores of skills across three levels of managers shows that the middle level managers' need for managerial skills is higher than top managers and supervisors. Overall, most respondents ranked “creating organizational climate” as the skill most needed while few said they needed development for “counseling subordinates.”

Developing Speaking Skills Module for Engineering Students

To increase the employability of engineering graduates, communication skills are crucial. In a dialogue between the industries and Malaysian public universities in 2002, it was highlighted that most local graduates lack communication skills (Tengku Mahaleel, 2002). Thus, to meet and exceed the expectation of all stakeholders, universities need to review the language and communication courses and teaching approaches. Splitt (1993) states that, “the challenge is to provide better ways for faculty to work with students, and to help them enhance their people-related skills. We need people who can work with other people, who can communicate, be inventive, creative, and have ideas and the courage to see them through”. Thus, taking into consideration these challenges, this research aims to develop an effective module of speaking skills for Universiti Malaysia Pahang’s (UMP) engineering students. The objectives of the research are (1) to develop students’ oral competency through various speaking activities based on workplace case scenarios and (2) to enhance students’ level of confidence as they engage in different types of communicative events. A total of 28 and 16 engineering students were engaged as subjects in the study for experimental and control group respectively. The experimental group was given treatment using the speaking skills module developed. To assess the effectiveness of the module, pre test and post test were conducted to both groups using Malaysian University English Testing (MUET) system. Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) form was also administered to both groups during the pre and post tests to measure their level of communication apprehension. For the experimental group, the results show there was a considerable improvement in their oral competency as well as a significant reduction of communication apprehension level after the treatment.

Managing the managers: improving the structure and operation of small fisheries departments, especially in SIDS

Many countries, especially Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and other developing countries have small fisheries departments (SFDs). These are responsible for a substantial proportion of the world's fisheries. They are often modelled after large fisheries departments in developed countries with large fisheries. A small fisheries department cannot be a small version of a large one, it must be differently structured with relatively less emphasis on technical skills and more on people-related skills and planning: e.g., facilitation, mediation and project management. There is also the need for SFDs to pursue management planning, comanagement and simplified, consensual approaches to fishery management. These require skills and an emphasis on processes that are often lacking. There are several factors that contribute to the resistance to change in this direction. Among these is the lack of the literature on fisheries planning process and especially on planning and running a small fisheries department. This is a key area requiring attention if these primary custodians of the world's fisheries are to play their part effectively.

Enabling the Cream to Rise to the Top

The use of competencies to identify and target leaders in organizations has picked up steam in the past decade or so. Drawing from the private sector, the public sectors of several advanced countries have comprehensively employed the competency approach within their own governance and management systems. This article looks at the employment of competencies in the senior public services of five jurisdictions and concludes that cross-jurisdictional similarity is evident only on “vision and strategy,” although people-related skills also appear as core competencies for enior managers. The article also argues that further research is necessary to understand why competencies in use in the senior public services differ so markedly from those in other organizations and settings.