World Youth Skills Day is celebrated annually on the 15th of July. For the past decade, the day has celebrated the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship, skills which will also play a role in addressing global challenges and advancing sustainable development.
Skills delivering career-long benefit
Essential skills – or personal skills – offer many benefits to individuals, businesses and industries. Data from the Essential Skills Tracker shows more than nine in ten people believe they are essential to their career – on par with literacy skills, and more even than sector specific knowledge or technical capability. These skills are certainly worth developing. They span all levels and roles and help you succeed in any job, so are valued by employers and colleagues alike.
The most impactful personal skills
Personal skills development impacts more than people’s professional lives, too. Those with stronger essential skills have been shown to enjoy greater life satisfaction and can earn up to 12% more than their peers.
Indeed.com lists the ten most impactful and important soft skills for career success as:
- Communication;
- Teamwork;
- Problem solving;
- Dependability;
- Critical thinking;
- Positive attitude;
- Organisation;
- Creativity;
- Adaptability; and
- Conflict resolution
The benefits of personal skills development in practice
The Printing Charity’s Rising Star Awards provide the opportunity for young people working in print and the allied trades to invest in courses to build the personal skills they have identified will support their career progression.
As part of her award, 2023 Rising Star winner Gabby Solarek, account manager at Eight Days a Week Print Solutions, undertook courses in Time Management, Customer Service, and Assertiveness.
She found that her courses helped her to become more confident and structured in her role, while helping in her personal life, too. Gabby would encourage anyone considering training and development to look at ways to focus on these.
“What you learn through this sort of skills development has a positive impact all round,” she says. “The courses I’ve undertaken have helped in my personal life and work performance too. I couldn’t be happier.”
Could you be a Rising Star in 2025, or do you know someone who could be? Sign up for our newsletter to be first to hear when next year’s applications open and visit the Rising Star pages to learn more.