Whose skill is it anyway? Soft skills and organisational politics

1. Whose skill is it anyway? Soft skills and organisational politics Irena Grugulis and Steven Vincent

2. Complex and contested nature of skill • ‘New’ definitions emphasise soft skills

3. What are ‘soft’ skills? • growth of service sector • most in demand by employers • “a good character, qualities of subservience and general handiness” • personal attributes re-labelled as skills

4. Implications of this • Use of stereotypes as proxy for productivity • Assumption soft skills are generic • Individualises responsibility • Supplant technical skills?

5. traits such as discipline, loyalty and punctuality are not “skills” that one either possesses or lacks; they are measures of commitment that one chooses to give or withhold based on the conditions of work offered. Lafer (2004)

6. ‘FutureTech’ Outsourced computer services to government department. Programming, maintenance and new applications ‘TCS’ Business operations outsourcing. Housing benefit claims processing for London borough.

7. TCS • Work re-organised (fragmented) • Aim – to remove case workers from the process entirely • Reception desk and call centre • Implications for gender

8. there’s no point in having the skills to do benefits casework if you haven’t got the attitude to go with it. And they’re both as important as each other (General Manager, TCS, male).

9. and there’s a whole relationship of trying to demonstrate my loyalty to TCS and it’s all expected that I should be willing to not really claim (IT worker, TCS, male).

10. Futuretech • Way work conducted changed • Soft skills as additional dimension to technical work • Demands on graduates • Graduates’ response

11. I always say, “shut up moaning”. What I say is “it is a good opportunity to [obtain] high level skills”, [when] obviously I am trying to fob them off. (Project manager, male, Futuretech)

12. Managers – the private sector ethos • TCS • ‘Managing the process’ • ‘TCS people’ • Futuretech • Importance of negotiation • Support for the partnership and politics

13. The changing nature of managers Team managers used to have skills, housing benefit related – backdating decisions, [you] used to be able to go to them and ask them for advice and discuss them. They don't have those skills now. All their skills are about doing statistics. You have to go round to people who have been here for a long time. Because no-one ever knows everything in this job, it's the type of job you will always be finding something new . . . TCS says you don't need to have those skills (TCS caseworker, female)

14. It’s very much wanting to make sure that people who joined, if you will, the upper levels of the accounts understand that and can work within it because you could bring in the wrong sort of people and the whole thing could collapse. (Programme manager, male, Futuretech)

15. Discussion • Exercise of both technical and soft skills • Not introduced in ‘skilful’ way • Attitude as substitute for skills and as additional demand • Individual power • Public sector alliances with private sector