Ready for the future? Employability skills and competencies in the twenty-first century: The view of international experts

2.1Employability skills and competencies: Definition and challenges

Employability is defined as a key individual resource that can be reinforced to help people face a constantly changing labour market, characterised by unpredictability and insecurity [15]. Employability can also be related to a number of factors, namely: personal resources, employability orientation, occupational expertise, optimisation of opportunities, sustainability of work, qualifications, and future-oriented perspectives meta-competences [16].

Specifically, the concept of employability, understood as a competency, is relevant to higher education institutions (HEIs) who can develop it in order to prepare young people to be successful in the new labour market [16], in the sense that “Competences can be understood as wide-ranging combinations of know-how –composites of knowledge, skills and attitudes possessed by an individual. Competences illustrate the person’s proficiency, capacity and ability to perform in professional tasks’ [17, pp. 30-31]. Today however, the issue of graduates’ employability transcends HEIs’ tradition of providing useful and matching knowledge, skills and attitudes; discussions are necessary, especially in view of the effects of digitalisation on the labour market [18]. Employability gaps can even be observed in developed countries with well-educated populations, especially among young citizens [19]. Naudé [20] suggests that the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary, and Slovenia are the only Central and Eastern European countries to be somewhat ready to face these challenges. Others, such as Slovakia, Romania, and Poland are the least prepared. Some countries have undertaken appropriate actions [21, 22], as in the case of Singapore’s “Smart Nation” plan. This latter country has adjusted its education system by introducing innovative learning methodologies in schools and helping students to develop generic employability skills [23].

Therefore, it seems that, in order to increase em-ployability expectations, it is necessary to anticipate the skills demanded across different jobs and work settings, rather than focus on future jobs. That is precisely the goal that is addressed in the following three reports: a) Future Work Skills 2020 [24]; b) The future of work: jobs and skills in 2030 [25] and c) World Bank Report [26]. These three reports identify several key drivers and factors of change in the labour market. The reports share similarly acknowledge technological change, social change, globalisation, and the intertwining of different spheres of our lives as the most influential factors. Additionally, the importance of environmental, social and political problems is emphasized in [24], while economic development differences are more patently stressed in [25]. Other critical factors mentioned for the European labour market include: the increase of female labour participation; the inflow of non-EU labour; population movements between EU countries; and the growing divide of the EU labour market [26].

In this context, EU education systems are being generally criticised for not providing equal opportunities for developing skills [26]. Similar trends were found in many Asian countries [27], such as Thailand, where multiple challenges are being faced with the establishing of vibrant, innovative education systems [28]. Therefore, new strategies are required to help young workers all other the world build their employability skills: if future employees are to be productive and competitive, they must possess the appropriate skills and competencies; the latter is the shared responsibility of practitioners, HEIs, researchers, policy-makers and students [29].

2.2State of the art

Several inventories of employability competencies can be found in the literature. One of them is the list given in [24] of 10 generic key competencies for the future labour market:

In another line of thought, [30] underline that modern competencies refer to gaining knowledge needed for understanding and solving real-world problems. The latter especially refer to:

These competencies have many common features with the proposed competences listed by [25]. Moreover, in an increasingly data-driven economy, the demand for “soft” social skills, such as teamwork and communication will grow [12, 32, 33].

To summarise, different labour markets are undergoing changes due to the same, shared global factors. Nevertheless, the impact of the various factors varies according to the countries’ levels of preparedness to develop employability skills [19, 28]. In addition, the competences underlying this employability are of a generic nature [24], although demands for more specific skills, such as social and ICT-related skills are also expected [30, 12].

2.3Key labour market and workforce characteristics in Spain, Poland and Thailand

Spain, Poland and Thailand are all OECD members. Thailand is the most recent, having joined in 2018. The differences between the Spanish, Polish and Thai labour markets are, however, noticeable, especially regarding unemployment rates and the employment structure.

Starting with unemployment rates, Thailand’s is extremely low. i.e. below 1% since 2011 [34]. The reasons are a low birth rate, lack of social insurance and an extensive informal sector: 64% of the labour force consists of street vendors, motorbike taxis, and other self-employed citizens. Spain’s labour market trends differ from that of most EU countries, which could be explained by deep-seated domestic problems [35]. Currently, Spain and Greece have the EU’s highest unemployment rates while Poland presents one of the lowest rates [36]. In 2019, the country accounted for a record-low unemployment rate of 3, 27% [37].

Regarding the structure of employment by sector in 2020, most of Thailand’s labour force works in the service sector (46%), and a large number is employed in agriculture. Spain’s structure is dominated by the service sector (75.83%), followed by industry (20.18%), and only 4 % of the workforce are employed in agriculture [38]. In Poland, the service sector accounts for 58,8% of employment, industry for 31,9%, and agriculture for 9,24% [39].

With respect to the number of top universities in all three countries, the highest ranking is held by Spain (11), followed by Thailand (37) and Poland (43) [40]. In 2018, the number of university graduates aged between 25–34 years in Spain and Poland were similar: around 44% [41]. In Thailand, the labour market consists mostly of a low-skilled workforce and suffers from a huge shortage of skilled labour [42]. However, in 2019, 52% of Thai workers with bachelor degrees and other graduates held jobs that were unrelated to their studies [43]. Spain and Poland suffer from an insufficient use of employee skills in the workplace, especially in high performance workplace systems [44–46]. This means that in all three cases, HEIs have not been keeping up with the pace of quality changes, resulting in a mismatch between skill supply and labour market demands.

In conclusion, all three countries have the common problem of determining and offering the skillsets required by their different labour markets and employment demands in the new economy, to bridge the fracture between personal competency development and company talent management policies. However, the nature of the fracture is different in each country, and therefore the question is if these differences are also present in the skills and competencies considered most valuable now and in the near future.

4.1Top competences in 2015 and 2019

The first notable finding is that based on the total values given to each competency in 2015 and 2019, all 10 generic competences were given higher assessments in the final phase of the research; such increases were statistically significant with p-values smaller than 0,05 except for the competencies: “Social intelligence” and “Computational thinking” (means and t-test results are shown in Table 2). We can infer that employability measures should focus on the acquisition of the generic skills listed.

As for the specific competencies, they were also perceived as more important in 2019 in all cases except “Formal Education” which was significantly less valued in the second round for the generic skills and, incidentally, in all three countries separately, although not significantly in these latter instances (p-value>0,05, see Table 2).

Some competencies were common to all three countries and research moments in time, specifically, the “Novel and adaptive thinking” generic skill and the self-management skills “Learning skills” and “Conscious self-development”. Each presented higher values in all cases. In 2019, another common generic skill, “Cross-cultural competency”, was revealed: it had only been considered in 2015 among the top skills by the Spanish experts. Therefore, some competencies can be regarded as more global than others, especially those related to self-management, and differences between countries seem to diminish over time. Figure 1 illustrates these common values, and clearly shows that Polish experts consistently valued these skills less than the others.

Fig. 1

Common most valued competences in 2015 and 2019 (2019 values).

In 2015, in Spain, the most valued skills were a mix of generic and specific ones, whereas in 2019, the top five were only of the generic kind, as shown in Table 3. It is equally worth noting that the seven skills deemed most valuable in 2015 were the same as in 2019, all reaching higher values in that year. We could thus interpret that these skills are gaining in importance in the Spanish labour market. A striking result is the drop in value of the generic “Sense-making” skill (which had a lower score in 2019 than in 2015) and the specific competences “Formal education”, and “Project management” (which, nonetheless, were more valued in 2019), while more versatile skills such as “Transdisciplinarity”, “Conscious self-development” or “Ability to work in diversified teams” indicate a need for more polyvalent employees.

On the other side of the spectrum, Thai experts made rather large adjustments to their priorities be-tween 2015 and 2019 (see Table 4). Labour market changes and social and political instability may underlie this evolution. In this case, certain social-related skills were highlighted in 2019 (i.e. “E-cooperation” or “Social entrepreneurship”) as well as IT-related skills (such as “Big data and cloud management proficiency”), together with other generic skills, for example “Virtual collaboration”.

Lastly, as can be observed in Table 5, Polish ex-perts kept half of the 2015 most valued competencies (specifically, generic and social skills such as “Novel & adaptive thinking”, “Social intelligence”, “Cognitive load management” “Learning skills” and “Conscious self-development”) in the main 2019 list. At the same time, they gave notably higher values to these labour market skillsets in 2019 than in 2015. Unlike Spain and Thailand, the most valued competencies were specific ones in both surveys, though they agreed that “Formal education” was less valuable in the 2019 ranking than in 2015, along with “Work experience”, “Building trust and good relations”, “Sense-making” and “Transdisciplinarity”. The latter two were granted more importance in both Thailand and Spain in 2019, once more emphasizing the dissimilarities between the studied countries and their labour contexts.

4.2Highest valued prospective competencies in 2020 and 2024

Results were also obtained based on what was deemed to be important for employability in 2020 according to the experts back in 2015, and what would be important in 2024 according to the experts in 2019. The generic analysis of the evolution of the expectations between 2020 (as of 2015) and 2024 (as of 2019) produced an interesting picture. All generic competences and two thirds of the specific skills were collectively assessed with lower values for 2024, even if their position in the ranking had not substantially changed. Only IT-related skills were consistently perceived as more relevant in 2024’s market than in that of 2020, enhancing their key role for future employment.

Four commonly highly perceived skills in all three countries in 2024 and their prospective values in 2020 are illustrated in Fig. 2: two generic skills (“Novel and adaptive thinking” and “Cross-cultural competency”) and two specific skills (“Flexibility” and “E-cooperation”). No common pattern was thus visible in how experts projected the changes.

Fig. 2

Common competency expectations for 2024 across countries on 2019 and 2024.

Tables 3, 4 and 5 also show that the top prospective skills in 2020 and 2024 were almost the same in all three countries, with some particularities. In Spain (Table 3), four of the five generic skills were the same in both estimates, with either similar or slightly lower perceived values. One sole exception was “Virtual collaboration”, which was replaced by “Computational thinking”. Similarly, three out of the five specific competencies also matched both times, again with the same or lower ratings. Diversity-related skills such as “Cooperation with people from different cultures” and, in particular, “Ability to work in diversified teams” were considered less important for future employability, while “Social entrepreneurship” and “Building trust and good relations” were enhanced.

Thai experts (Table 4) were also consistent in their 2020 and 2024 estimates regarding the label and value of the generic competency ranking, only “Social intelligence” taking precedence over “New media literacy”. Among the latter, it was remarkable that Thai experts considered “Design mind-set” a relevant future skill to develop, while Spanish and Polish experts did not give it much consideration. Moreover, three of the five specific competencies were likewise at the top of the ranking as future employability skills in both 2020 and 2024, with higher values in all cases. In this case, “E-cooperation” came first with a solid 5/5, along with “Conscious self-development”, replacing “Virtual collaborative innovation” and “Work experience”.

The experts in Poland (Table 5) likewise considered four out of five generic competencies to be among the top in 2020 and 2024, with more polarised values in the second round. “New media literacy” was replaced by “Transdisciplinarity” even though the latter had been valued with a lower mark. However, the ranking of the top specific competencies was more variable in this case, since only two skills were on both lists, namely “E-cooperation” and “Web-based collaborative innovation”, the latter being relevant only in the Polish survey. It is also worth mentioning that Polish experts valued a diversity-related competency (“Ability to work on diversified teams”) as a future skill as well as two IT-related ones (“Web-based collaborative innovation” and “High technology entrepreneurship”) to the detriment of social and self- management skills. External factors that may affect the labour market were thus considered by these experts.

4.3Estimates for 2020 vs. actual 2019 perceptions

The third analysis compared the employability skills estimated by experts for 2020 with their actual responses in 2019. Starting with Poland (Table 4), expectations for 2020 were very similar to the values given for 2019, the most accurate forecast being that of the skillsets for required employability, although it is worth mentioning that the values were lower in all cases. The only differences were the appearance of “Social intelligence”, “Project management” and “Flexibility” instead of “Building trust” and the more technical “Virtual collaboration” and “Collaborative innovation using web tools”. Conversely, Thai estimates were the least accurate of the three panels (Table 4), predicting successfully only four of the ten top competencies, and giving more value to specific social skills and less to IT management skills than expected.

Finally, the Spanish experts (Table 3) expressed that their expectations were met regarding three generic competencies and three specific ones, although all of them with lower current values than in the estimates. “Sense-making” and “Virtual collaboration” were interchanged with “New media literacy” and Transdisciplinarity, while “E-cooperation” and “Cooperation with people representing different cultures” left the top five for the specific skills “Building trust and good relations” and “Conscious self- development”. All cooperation-related skills were re-ranked into lower positions.

All in all, the views regarding what contributes to employability differed rather notably between countries, as did the levels of insight into present and future market demands. Nevertheless, there was a trend towards a consensus, with a prevalence of “Novel & adaptive thinking” as the one common key employability skill across all three countries and years, often complemented with “Flexibility”, “Learning skills” and “Cross-cultural competency”. These results may help policy-makers and HEI professionals to complement the teaching curricula and align it better with present and future labour market demands.

6.1Limitations and future research avenues

To finish, this study presented certain limitations that create a number of avenues for future research. First, the list of chosen competencies comprised only 10 generic ones (as identified in the literature) and twice as many specific ones. Even though the experts were asked to add missing competencies to the list, none were put forward. Second, the experts were asked to use a Likert scale from 1–5, therefore giving them a limited value range, and thus small differences. The findings of this study could, however, serve as the basis for a quantitative survey, leading to more comprehensive research, using other statistical tools such as Common Factor Analysis. Future studies should also consider adding the views of graduate students to the expert panel, given that other researchers [32] have pointed to such participation as a strategic contribution to the research topic.