Skills and Competencies Needed to Succeed in Today's Workplace
Because the world of work is changing, the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education formed the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) to study the kinds of competencies and skills that workers must have to succeed in today's workplace. The results of the study were published in a document entitled What Work Requires of Schools: A SCANS Report for America 2000. A summary of the findings are provided in the tables below.

Table 1: SCANS' Five Competencies

Resources: Identifies, organizes, plans, and allocates resources

  • Time - selects goal-relevant activities, ranks them, allocates time, and prepares and follows schedules
  • Money - uses or prepares budgets, makes forecasts, keeps records, and makes adjustments to meet objectives
  • Material and facilities - acquires, stores, allocates, and uses materials or space efficiently
  • Human resources - assesses skills and distributes work accordingly, evaluates performance and provides feedback

Interpersonal: Works with others

  • Participates as member of a team - contributes to group effort
  • Teaches others new skills
  • Services clients/customers - works to satisfy customers expectations
  • Exercises leadership - communicates ideas to justify position, persuades and convinces others, responsibly challenges existing procedures and policies
  • Negotiates - works toward agreements involving exchange of resources, resolves divergent interests
  • Works with diversity - works well with men and women from diverse backgrounds

Information: Acquires and evaluates information

  • Acquires and evaluates information
  • Organizes and maintains information
  • Interprets and communicates information
  • Uses computers to process information

Systems: Understands complex interrelationships

  • Understands systems - knows how social, organizational, and technological systems work and operates effectively with them
  • Monitors and corrects performance - distinguishes trends, predicts impacts on system operations, diagnoses deviations in systems performance and corrects malfunctions
  • Improves or designs systems - suggests modifications to existing systems and develops new or alternative systems to improve performance

Technology: Works with a variety of technologies

  • Selects technology - chooses procedures, tools, or equipment including computers and related technologies
  • Applies technology to task - understands intent and proper procedures for setup and operation of equipment
  • Maintains and troubleshoots equipment - prevents, identifies, or solves problems with equipment, including computers and other technologies

Table 2: A Three-Part Foundation of SCANS Skills and Personal Qualities

Basic Skills: Reads, writes, performs arithmetic and mathematical operations, listens, and speaks

  • Reading - locates, understands, and interprets written information in prose and in documents such as manuals, graphs, and schedules
  • Writing - communicates thoughts, ideas, information, and messages in writing; and creates documents such as letters, directions, manuals, reports, graphs, and flow charts
  • Arithmetic/mathematics - performs basic computations and approaches practical problems by choosing appropriately from a variety of mathematical techniques
  • Listening - receives, attends to, interprets, and responds to verbal messages and other cues
  • Speaking - organizes ideas and communicates orally

Thinking Skills: Thinks creatively, makes decisions, solves problems, visualizes, knows how to learn, and reasons

  • Creative thinking - generates new ideas
  • Decision making - specifies goals and constraints, generates alternatives, considers risks, and evaluates and chooses best alternatives
  • Problem solving - recognizes problems and devises and implements plan of action
  • Visualizing - organizes and processes symbols
  • Knowing how to learn - uses efficient learning techniques to acquire and apply new knowledge and skills
  • Reasoning - discovers a rule or principle underlying the relationship between two or more objects and applies it when solving a problem

Personal Qualities: Responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, integrity, and honesty

  • Responsibility - exerts a high level of effort and perseveres towards goal attainment
  • Self-esteem - believes in own self-worth and maintains a positive view of self
  • Sociability - demonstrates understanding, friendliness, adaptability, empathy, and politeness in group settings
  • Self-management - assesses self accurately, sets personal goals, monitors progress, and exhibits self-control
  • Integrity/honesty - chooses ethical courses of action