John Keells supports ELTU soft skills workshops

Workshop: John Keells Social Responsibility Foundation together with the English Language Teaching Unit of the Kelaniya University recently presented a five-day series of soft skills workshops titled "The final step", designed to enhance the employability of graduates.

"The final step" involved two panel discussions as well as three interactive workshops dealing with varied subjects such as employer expectations, team building and leadership skills, adapting to the corporate environment, personality development and confidence building, personal grooming and corporate hospitality. Each day of the workshop attracted over five hundred final year undergraduates - an unprecedented response.

Employability of graduates from the Sri Lankan university system has been a subject of much debate, with private sector recruits being disappointed with the adaptability of graduates to corporate environments.

Graduates themselves have preferred the relative safety of employment in the public sector, despite the bulk of suitable jobs being created by the private sector. This has meant that the private sector has not been able to leverage on the strength of the cream of Sri Lanka's student population and vice versa.

While graduates receive a strong academic grounding during their university programmes, soft skills such as personality development, confidence building, and social skills often take a backseat. Such soft skills however provide graduates with clear competitive advantages in the job market.

It is with the intention of fulfilling this need and making graduates more employable that the English Language Teaching Unit (ELTU) of the University of Kelaniya formulated a proposal to impart soft skills to final year undergraduates across all faculties.