Graduate work readiness has become overwhelmingly important because all too often we experience young graduates that have the academic knowledge needed for the job, yet they lack the crucial emotional intelligence and work readiness score to make meaningful contributions to the working world. The result is that these young graduates and their employers become despondent and graduates again become part of the desperate pool of unemployed youth.
As an employer, there is a need to employ graduates that are working with emotional intelligence. People who are not ready to contribute optimally to your business could have a major negative impact on efficiency, customer satisfaction and profit.
In this post I will provide 5 pointers to understand Work Readiness and emotional intelligence in the workplace.
1. A work ready person is resilient
Resilience is the ability to bounce back despite challenges and adversity with the confidence that you are empowered and comfortable to deal with the ‘perfect storm’.
Nelson Mandela said: ‘Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell and got back up again’
The opposite of resilience is someone who experiences a crisis, is not able to bounce back or recover, and struggles to live the productive life they had before the crisis. They let the crisis become a part of their life and are not able to move on or progress.
A resilient person understands that they need to master skills to build a strong base and deliberately set-up time to nurture relationships, exercise, sleep well, be a great learner, maximise joy and practise gratitude.
Doing a work readiness programme increases your ability to become resilient and therefore more work ready.
2. A work ready person motivates themselves
The only form of motivation is self-motivation! It is true that self-motivation is the ability to find what is needed to make the most out of most days more often.
A work ready person who relies on themselves for motivation experiences these 6 benefits of self motivation:
- Improved performance
- Diverse Productivity – finding various ways to work smarter where it matters most
- Persistence to achieve objectives
- Acceptance of what cannot be controlled and focus on what can
- Innovation
- Maintains focus.
3. A work ready person takes self-responsibility
I dare say that almost everything in life is a choice and the more you and I take full responsibility for all our choices the more work ready we become.
A responsibility focussed individual:
- Stops making excuses for themselves
- Stops complaining and instead focus on possible solutions
- Learns how to manage finances
- Avoids procrastination
- Is consistent and sticks to their schedule.
4. A work ready person is emotionally intelligent.
To be emotionally intelligent, also known as EQ, is to have the ability to understand, use and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.
Other components to improve emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, internal motivation, empathy and social skills.
Can you just imagine what a perfect world we would live in if workplace readiness and emotional intelligence training could equip us all to become masters at these skills?
I believe that a work readiness course is not complete if it does not address these skills in an effective manner.
5. A work ready person optimizes the fine balance between energy and stress.
I believe it is more about energy management than time or stress management! To have the optimal energy level to do the right things at the right time and for the right reason is ideal.
Work readiness training needs to include clear guidelines on how to develop an effective To Do list. Implementing the well-known matrix of urgency and importance, and prioritising tasks on this matrix improves this balance between energy and stress.
Working on these skills is a life long journey of learning. I believe that good work readiness training materials includes a Work Readiness inventory. The results of such an inventory brings pointers for self-reflection and learning opportunities.
To enable your employees and yourself to be happy and engaged at work and have the feeling that you are contributing to meaningful work you need to be sure that you are Work Ready. In summary work readiness means that you are resilient, self-motivated, emotionally intelligent, takes self-responsibility and balances energy and stress. To be excellent in all these skills is a journey of lifelong learning.
To initiate your work readiness and EQ training journey or that of your employees complete our Work Readiness and EQ course and receive your own work readiness score. Click here: – Work Readiness and EQ course.