Role of Employability and Life Skills in Securing and Retaining Livelihood Opportunities

Abstract

In today's workplace, a blend of both hard and soft skills is needed for employees to succeed, even though the latter remains overlooked. Hard skills are the job-specific abilities that workers need to perform their duties, while soft skills are the personal qualities they need to thrive in the world of work. This study postulates that learning institutions have overly inclined towards hard skills at the expense of soft 'employability' skills, thereby making those seeking to secure or progress in their jobs learn the hard way their need for such skills. The objectives were:

• To study the most important factors that organizations consider while hiring or promoting workers,


• To observe the common employability and life skills that employers consider while making hiring/promotion decisions, and


• To assess the extent to which employability and life skills are important in securing and maintaining livelihood opportunities.

With the research seeking to answer the 'what' question rather than the 'how' or 'why,' a descriptive research design was adopted to complement an inductive reasoning approach. A mixed methodology was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 284 respondents from 24 counties in Kenya out of 47, who represented more than 10 sectors. The results show that employability skills constitute the main factor of consideration while hiring/promoting workers. The common employability skills include communication, time management, a positive attitude, teamwork, and decision-making. Without these soft skills, workers struggle to secure and maintain jobs at the strategic, business, and operation levels of an organization.