Employability Skills: A Study on Perception on Engineering Employees in Chennai District

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1 Volume 118 No , ISSN: (on-line version) url: ijpam.eu Employability Skills: A Study on Perception on Engineering Employees in Chennai District P. Carolin Golda Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies, Women s Christian College, Chennai. Dr.A.R.Krishnan Associate Professor, School of Management, SRMIST ABSTRACT The planned development of human resources for socio-economic upliftment of a country is referred to as manpower planning. It consists of development, maintenance and utilization of actual and potential member of the labour force of a country. In the present scenario, qualified and skilled human resources are extremely important in the highly competitive business environment for the productive capability and economic wellbeing of the country. As the result, employers would like to employ capable employees who possess high level of employability skills to face the rapid changes occur in the industry which reflects on job performance and organizational success. Therefore, the study focused on identifying the determinants of employability skill and measuring the impact of employability skills on workplace performance. The study reveals that employability skills influence positively on workplace performance. Keywords: Employability Skills, Engineering Employees, Workplace Performance, employees perception, Chennai INTRODUCTION The planned development of human resources for socio-economic upliftment of a country is referred to as manpower planning. It consists of development, maintenance and utilisation of actual and potential member of the labour force of a country. In the present scenario, qualified and skilled human resources are extremely important in the highly competitive business environment for the productive capability and economic wellbeing of the country. As the result, employers would like to employ capable employees who possess high level of employability skills to face the rapid changes occur in the industry which reflects on work performance and organizational success.hillage and Pollard (1998) defined employability as having the capability to gain initial employment, maintain employment and obtain new employment if required. The four main elements of his definition Employability assets, which takes into account knowledge, skills and attitudes; 879

2 Deployment, which refers to career management skills; Presentation, which is explained as the ability to present oneself in order to find employment; and finally, Personal circumstances and external factors, which take into account individual situational impacts as well as the level of opportunities that are currently found in the labour market Employability refers to the form of job specific adaptableness that enables employees to identify and realize career opportunities which helps the person to mobilize job within organisation. So, it is important for the employees to enhance the employability skill individually to gain or sustain in the employment. Recent, Nasscom report stated due to automation over 260 million are likely to lose jobs by 2020, if they are not update to the current tech skill. This study elaborates the important skill acquired by employees or prospective employees to get employment or continue in the job. LITERATURE REVIEW Raman &Koka (2015) study revealed that problem solving skills, communication skills and interpersonal skills tops the list of skills the IT industry expects from their employees. It has also identified the reasons for poor soft skills among students from the IT professionals perspective. Chavan&Surve (2014) assessed the parameters of employability skill based on employers perception. The results exhibited that integrity & honesty, problem-solving, team work, Selfconfidence, communication, decision making and time management/ prioritizing skills were considered as most important skills. Whereas creativity/innovation, decision making, ICT skills were considered moderately important. Further, employers are not satisfied of newly hired employees becauseof their communication, time management / prioritizing, self-confidence and decision making are most lacking employability skills of them. Kurup (2017) identified five important employability skills in IT industry namely high order thinking, interpersonal, personal, problem solving and technical skills. The researcher found that female engineers posses high level of employability skills and perform better than male engineers. Though they are good at certain skill, the hiring proportions of female engineers for a professional career are comparatively low due to lack of comfort in relocation. Kulkarni&Chachadi (2014) measured the perspective of employers on four major skills sets - Human Skills, Professional skills, Communication skills, and Technical Skills using Analytic Hierarchy Process to quantify the preferred skill-sets in three industry sectors namely IT/ITeS, Engineering Services, Manufacturing. The result showed that human skills play an important role in hiring process compared to all other skills across various type of industry. Rupali Singh et al. (2017) explored the antecedents of employability from the employer s perspective to provide sustainable employment and developed a measurement scale on the employability in education sector. The results revealed thatdeterminants of employability are knowledge, innovative skills, innovative abilities, personality factors, career-building traits, emotional intelligence and efficacy beliefs. Further, the author s believes that the self assessment 880

3 tool would help the students to assess the competencies level which motivates them to possess the targeted job and pursue professional development. Fugate, Kinicki&Ashforth (2004) examined the idea that an individual s employability subsumes a host of person-centered constructs needed to deal effectively with the career-related changes occurring in today s economy. The authors argued that employability represents a form of work specific (pro)active adaptability that consists of three dimensions career identity, personal adaptability, and social and human capital. The impact of employability on organizational behavior is illustrated through applications to the research literatures on job loss and job search. Further, they recommended the researchers to study that employability will positively influence important workplace phenomena, such as coping with organizational change, performance, and proactive socialization Abas (2016) described the extent of practice of employability skills of government employees and their level of contextual performance in work settings. The results showed that noviceemployees in public institutions applied their employability skills such as fundamental, personal management and teamwork skills to some extent. Moreover, results revealed that employees had satisfactory contextual performance. Thus, the author suggested that application of employability skills and contextual behaviors should be enhanced to meet the increasing and complex challenges of their respective government agencies. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The objective of the study is to find out the factors of employability skill required at the place of work. 1. To inculcate the facets of employability skill in the place of work 2. To determine the impact of employability skills on workplace performance METHODOLOGY The study is descriptive in nature. Both primary and secondary data was adopted. Primary data were collected using questionnaire to measure the employability skill of engineering employees. Secondary data were collected from published sources like magazine, books, journals, annual report etc. The questionnaires were distributed to the entry level engineers in Chennai district. The researcher structured questionnaire in the form of Closed Ended Questions. Sampling size of the study is limited to200. The collected data was processed and analysed using SPSS 20, to meet out the objectives of the study. Percentage analysis, factor analysis and regression analysis was performed to present the results. Results & Discussion The results of the study were given below Table -1: Personal Characteristics of the Respondents Personal Characteristics Frequency Percent 881

4 Age Gender Designation Qualification Work Experience Less than 25 years years Total Male Female Total Customer Support Specialist Network Engineer Software Engineer Total Under Graduation Post Graduation Total Less than 5 years Above 5 years Total From the above table, it is inferred that out of 200 respondents, 54% of the employees were below 25 years and 46% were be above 26 years. With respect to gender, 60% were male and 40% were female. With regards to designation of the respondents, 53% of them working as customer support specialist, followed by 24% were network engineers and 23% were software engineers. Pertaining to the qualification, most of the respondents were graduates and 26% were hold master degree. Considering education, 78% of the respondents have less than 5 years of experience in the industry, so they are considered as entry level engineers and 22% having more than 5 years of experience. FACETS OF EMPLOYABILITY SKILL The determinants of employability skills of the engineering employees were identified using factor analysis. Factor analysis is a statistical procedure used to identify a small number of factors that can be used to represent relationships among set of interrelated variables. Table -2: KMO and Bartlett's Test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square 5236 df 120 Sig. 0 The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy is a statistics that indicates the proportion of variance in variable that might be caused by underlying factors. High values (close to 1.0) generally indicate that a factor analysis may be useful with data. If the value is less than 0.50, the result of the factor analysis probably won't be very useful. In this study, the value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy is which indicates meritorious i.e. high level of adequacy for measuring the employability skill of the engineering employees. 882

5 Furthermore, based on these loadings 16 items reduced into 5 significant factors that influence employability skill of the employees. The positive values show positive loadings on the factors extracted and the negative values show inverse relationships. The factors can be explained by arranging employee variables from the questionnaire, into 5 groups based on highest Component Matrix loadings per statement, as below:- Table -3: Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis Interpersonal Skill Functional Skill Technical Skill Leadership Skill Workplace Performance Communication Creativity Teamwork Adaptability Emotional Intelligence Responsibility Critical Thinking Problem Solving Information Literacy Technical Knowledge Innovative abilities Motivation Conflict Management Goal Clarity Self Efficacy Financial performance Total Variance Explained (92.283%) Cronbach Alpha Reliability (0.976) The factor analysis extracted five factors to determine the employability skill at workplace namely interpersonal skill, functional skill, technical skill and leadership skill and workplace performance with % variance. The overall cronbach alpha value is which indicates excellent internal consistency level. The factor loading is ranged between to The extracted factors were explained in detail below. 883

6 Interpersonal Skills Interpersonal skills plays major role in any organization. This helps the employee to communicate effectively with the colleagues, socialize with people, connect and associate with people at various levels. The items loaded under this factor were communication, creativity, teamwork, adaptability, emotional intelligence and responsibility. 884

7 Functional Skills Functional skills refer to the competencies that are manageable to many different things at work place. The items loaded under these factors were critical thinking, problem solving and information literacy. Technical Skills Technical skills refers to job specific skills, which helps the employee to get hired or promoted to higher level which includes knowledge and expertise required/ acquired to do the job at work place and knowledge of the applications. The items loaded under this factor are technical knowledge and innovative abilities. Leadership Skill Leadership skill are consider to be essential by the employers for positioning the employees at workplace to make effective decision to meet out the vision and goal of the organization by motivating and inspiring people. The items loaded under this factor were conflict management and motivation. Workplace performance Workplace performance measured by productivity of the employee. The items loaded under this factor are named as goal clarity, self efficacy and financial performance. IMPACT OF EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS ON WORKPLACE PERFORMANCE The impact of employability skills on workplace performance were examined using regression analysis. Employability skills of the engineering employees considered as predictor and the Workplace performances considered as criterion variable. Multiple R Value : F value : R Square Value : P value : <0.01* Table 4: Variables in the Regression Analysis Coefficients a Unstandardized Standardized Model Coefficients Coefficients t Sig. Std. B Beta Error 1 (Constant) Interpersonal Skill (x 1 ) <0.01* Functional Skill (x 2 ) <0.01* Technical Skill (x 3 ) Leadership Skill (x 4 ) <0.01* a. Dependent Variable: Workplace Performance 885

8 It can be inferred that workplace performance as a dependent variable 86.6% of workplace performance was explained by employability skill with the correlation of R-0.930, F value is and p value is <0.001 shows at 1% significant level. Hence, it is concluded as employability skills positively influence workplace performance of the engineering employee. The results indicated that success of the employee performance at workplace is purely relies on the employability skill. Employability skill (x) is predictor the independent variable workplace performance(y) CONCLUSION y = x x x x 4 Employability is the enhancement of skills and personal attributes that help in getting employed, achieving success in the chosen career and having an edge over other contenders. The skills not only help a candidates or employees to land or sustain in a desired job, it enables one to grow as an individual to benefit the workforce and a country economy. The primary aim of the study is to find out the importance of employability skills at workplace. It is found that interpersonal skill, technical skill, functional skill and leadership skill of an employee plays a significant role in measuring the workplace performance. The employees have to enhance their occupational skill to sustain in the job, they need to adapt themselves in every job situation as industry or employer demand. Every job demands its own skill set to perform at the workplace. It is important to learn and acquire required skill set at work place. The organization need to train and facilitate the employees to update the knowledge and skills requires at work environment. Employability Skills are not job specific, but are skills which cut horizontally across all industries and vertically across all jobs from entry level to chief executive officer (Sherer&Eadie 1987). REFERENCES 1. Abas, M. C. (2016). Application of Employability Skills and Contextual Performance Level of Employees in Government Agencies. Journal of Education and Learning (EduLearn), 10(2), Chavan, R. R., &Surve, A. Y. (2014). Assessing parameters of employability skills: an employers perspective. Asian Journal of Management Research, 5(2), Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., &Ashforth, B. E. (2004). Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications. Journal of Vocational behavior, 65(1), Goodman, S., &Tredway, G. (2016). Antecedents of perceived graduate employability: A study of student volunteers in a community-based organisation. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 42(1), P.Mohamed Shakeel, Neural Networks Based Prediction Of Wind Energy Using Pitch Angle Control, International Journal of Innovations in Scientific and Engineering Research (IJISER), Vol.1, No.1, pp.33-37, Hillage, J., & Pollard, E. (1998). Employability: developing a framework for policy analysis. London: DfEE. 7. Kulkarni, N., &Chachadi, A. H. (2014). Skills for Employability: Employers' Perspective. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 11(3),

9 8. Kurup, A. (2017). A Study on Corporate Perceptions on Employability skills of Engineering Graduates in Information Technology Industry based on Gender. International Journalfor Innovative Research In Multidisciplinary Field, 3(1), Raman, M., &Koka, A. S. (2015). The Ever-Increasing Demand for Soft Skills at Workplace: A Study on IT Professionals Perspectives. In International Conference on Management and Information Systems September (Vol. 18, p. 20). 10. Rupali Singh, GinniChawla, SonalAgarwal&Avani Desai (2017). Employability and innovation: development of a scale. International Journal of Innovation Science, 9(1), Sherer, M., &Eadie, R. (1987). Employability skills: Key to success. Thrust, 17(2). 12. Sulekha Nair. Artificial Intelligence in workplace will kill some jobs, but produce host of creative ones, say experts retrieved from on

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