A recent article by Nick Schulz of the American Enterprise Institute in the Wall Street Journal reveals some inconvenient truths about the difficulty the manufacturing sector currently faces in filling jobs. There’s a lot of jobs that need filling, the problem is finding qualified people.
In many instances the difficulty stems around the lack of ‘soft’ skills—not necessarily the technical stuff. It’s skills that employers not-so-long-ago took for granted: being on time for work, properly answering the telephone, passing the drug test.
Others sectors have reported similar findings. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has reported ‘that “professionalism” or “work ethic” is the top “applied” skill that younger workers lack’.
This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to many of you. Here’s the full article—Hard Unemployment Truths About ‘Soft’ Skills.
To me the skill-gap that Schulz has identified is really not a skill at all, it’s the lack of a professional’s mind-set. Yet, let’s look beyond the semantics for now. The problem Schulz is illuminating is symptomatic of a declining culture…one that hits the business community smack upside the head!