“Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.”
Denzel Washington
Evidence points to a widening gap between workplace requirements and the readiness of prospective new hires. Skills like professionalism, a solid work ethic, communications, teamwork and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving are reported to be severely lacking in new hires at all levels of education. For high school graduates, entry-level readiness has also been found to be deficient in basic skill areas including writing in English, mathematics and foreign languages. In 2003, 87% of adults tested below the proficient level in prose literacy and even the average score of adults with graduate study was in the intermediate range (the level below proficient).
When secondary and undergraduate education fails to prepare workers adequately, it falls to employers to provide remedial training. However, employers face many of the same challenges that schools and colleges face when educating their workers. Organizations that use the same techniques and approaches used by schools are likely to get the same result.
The question is, if our schools haven’t taught our employees to think and haven’t developed their capacity to learn, how can employers manage it?
Neuroscience research is now pointing the way to more effective ways to train and build the foundational skills that employees need for success in entry-level positions, and that enable them to learn more quickly and to retain more. BrainWare Safari capitalizes on these new understandings to fill in the gaps and to strengthen the basic thinking processes needed to facilitate remediation.
Everyone has cognitive strengths and weaknesses and it is possible to improve these underlying skills using specific training techniques, even for adults. Developing these underlying skills leads the way to more efficient knowledge acquisition. Indeed, remediation of underlying cognitive skills is arguably a pre-requisite for meeting businesses’ expectations for entry-level hires.
Cognitive Skills and Workforce Development White Paper (requires free registration)
Cognitive Skills and Reading White Paper (requires free registration)
Cognitive Skills and Math White Paper (requires free registration)
