The Silent Skill: Personal development and active listening
September 29, 2023
Build the skills you need into your business
The Skills Builder Universal Framework provides a complete approach for building essential skills across your business.
We provide employers with tools, training, resources and deep expertise to support skills development across their outreach, recruitment and staff learning and development.
We provide employers with tools, training, resources and deep expertise to support skills development across their outreach, recruitment and staff learning and development.
Bespoke solutions for your business:
Our employer programme delivers tools, training, resources and deep expertise to drive improvements in your business across three broad areas: recruitment, staff development, and outreach.
Each programme is bespoke to your organisation, in any industry or workplace setting.
We’ll work together to identify opportunities to enhance what you’re already doing to build skills, or inspire new routes for essential skills development. Then, in partnership, we’ll create and implement a strategy to achieve your goals.
Who we work with
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Together we can unlock the potential of your organisation by building essential skills to:
Drive productivity
Up-skill and re-skill employees
Attract and retain top talent
Access a wider candidate pool
Foster social mobility
Build your reputation and outreach
The Skills Builder Universal Framework is at the core of our programme for employers. It’s the leading, industry-validated approach for measuring and developing essential skills, used by over 850 organisations in the UK and beyond.
Employer Programme areas
Recruitment
Hire the right person for the right role
- Identify the essential skills you need
- Produce clear job descriptions
- Use the right questions in your interviews and assessments
- Assess applicants fairly and consistently
- Give candidates helpful feedback
Staff Development
Build a skilled and inclusive workforce
- Enable your staff to understand their skill strengths and development areas
- Create training to develop skills across your organisation
- Empower managers to drive skill development
- Access expert tools and materials
Outreach
Ensure essential skills for all
- Support children, young people and those outside the labour market
- Embed essential skills across your provision
- Design and create new resources
- Measure the impact of your outreach
- Access impactful volunteering opportunities
92%
believe that essential skills are important for success within their career.
64%
would be more likely to apply to a role if it clearly and transparently explained the essential skills required in the job description.
89%
of employees who benefited from learning & development using the Universal Framework believe it improved their performance, and...
75%
felt more engaged in their work.
Join the Skills Builder Employer Programme
The case for essential skills
Attract and retain top talent
- 56% of UK workers would consider moving jobs for better skills-building opportunities (Skills Builder and YouGov 2023).
- Employees with higher levels of essential skills go further in their careers, earning up to £10,200 more than those with lower levels of essential skills.
- By adopting the Skills Builder approach, you can attract and retain candidates with the greatest potential.
Open up a wider candidate pool
- Presenting employment opportunities using the language of the Skills Builder Framework helps to attract a more diverse pool of candidates with the skills you need, reducing bias and barriers to entry.
- Removing jargon can facilitate lateral movement and career progression in larger organisations and promotes social mobility beyond junior roles.
- By implementing our transparent and objective approach, you can be confident that you’re hiring the best person for the job.
Upskilling and reskilling your team
- Since essential skills are needed in almost every job, in any sector, and at any level of seniority, it’s important that your employees build the valuable and transferable skills that enable them to succeed in their careers. In fact, 92% of workers would like more opportunities to build these skills (Skills Builder and YouGov 2023).
- As people’s roles evolve, their skill sets will need to adapt. Consistent use of the Framework and regularly revisiting steps supports individuals throughout their professional lives.
- Our train-the-trainer model provides a sustainable approach, with 89% employees engaged with the Skills Builder approach noting better job performance and a further 75% feeling more engaged with their work.
Speak the language of schools and colleges
- 85% of secondary and Further Education institutions in England have adopted the Skills Builder Framework as the language of employability.
- By using this shared language, you can effectively connect with young people and ensure they relate to your organisation.
- Engage the younger generation through outreach programmes that help them understand how their skills translate into your roles, organisation and culture.
Testimonials
“Emma took the time to understand the purpose and design of our work experience programme and created tailored resources that reflected this understanding. The resources also provide improved structure and consistency with clear instructions enabling them to be utilised quickly by a wide range of colleagues.”
– PA Consulting, Outreach focus
“Recruiting managers have greater clarity about the skills they require and attempt to identify these at interview.”
– Charlotte Treverton-Jones, AKW, Recruitment focus at entry-level and management positions
Ratings
Join the Partnership and build essential skills into your business
Programme structure
Through the employer programme, we will work with you to create a tailored strategy for achieving excellence in essential skills development. We can also provide Bespoke Skills Support to help create tools and resources to deliver your strategy. Below we have outlined the programme elements over a year. Click on each tab for further information.
QUARTER 1
QUARTER 2
QUARTER 3
QUARTER 4
Strategic support
Develop a bespoke strategy to embed essential skills
Develop a bespoke strategy to embed essential skills
Kick off meeting
45 mins
45 mins
Planning Meeting Part 1
2 hours
2 hours
Planning Meeting Part 2
90mins
90mins
Progress
Check-in
Month 6 review:
60 mins
Check-in
Month 6 review:
60 mins
Progress
Check-in
Month 9 review:
60 mins
Check-in
Month 9 review:
60 mins
Progress
Check-in
Month 12 review:
60 mins
Check-in
Month 12 review:
60 mins
Online tools and resources
Skills Builder Benchmark / Skills Builder Launchpad / Skills Builder Universal Framework
Network Training
Network and learn alongside other partners
Network and learn alongside other partners
Network Training 1
Network Training 2
Network Training 3
Network Training 4
Excellence Awards
Celebrate best practice by achieving an Impact Level or Excellence Mark
Celebrate best practice by achieving an Impact Level or Excellence Mark
Impact Levels/Skills Builder Employer Excellence Mark
Volunteering
Skills Builder-facilitated volunteering to inspire young people.
Skills Builder-facilitated volunteering to inspire young people.
Skills Builder facilitated volunteering opportunities
Bespoke Skills Support
Implement your strategy with additional support from Skills Builder
Implement your strategy with additional support from Skills Builder
Bespoke Skills Support from Skills Builder
Including training, mapping your programmes and tools to the Framework, or resource creation as required.
Including training, mapping your programmes and tools to the Framework, or resource creation as required.
Accreditation
As you join us on the Employer programme, you will be working towards achieving organisational level accreditation to recognise and celebrate your commitment to a high quality essential skills approach across your business.
Our set of Excellence Standards define what best practice looks like in our three focus areas and are there to provide the clarity and structure you need to achieve one of our Excellence Marks. Whether one team in your organisation is embedding the essential skills in one area or there is a wider organisational commitment across all three areas, there are four levels of excellence to motivate and inspire you and your teams towards a whole business approach to essential skills.
Find out more by downloading the Excellence Mark guide below.
Does your Outreach provision build essential skills? You could achieve programmatic level accreditation through our impact levels. Visit our Impact Directory to explore the wide range of accredited programmes our partners offer and download the guide to find out how to get involved.
Tools & Resources
Essential Skills Academy
Provide a structured programme of training in essential skills for your team with our Essential Skills Academy.
Benchmark
Use the Skills Builder Benchmark to assess your staff’s skillset and the combined skills within your teams
Case Studies
Allen & Overy
Lloyds Banking Group
Thames Water
Morgan Sindall
LNER
Network Rail
