Thousands of gen Z students in Greater Manchester are to learn “soft skills” such as empathy and time-management in a UK-first trial aimed at teaching “everyday but essential” tools.
The pioneering programme will teach young people how to thrive in the workplace after employers said “digital natives” were too afraid to speak on the phone or do job interviews.
Prof Sandeep Ranote, a leading child psychiatrist, said those born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s – known as gen Z – had grown up in a very different global world that had left them lacking some key social skills.
“Young people are going into a world with huge challenges that certainly I didn’t have,” she said. “I call it the five Cs: they lived through Covid, climate change, cost-of-living, cyberspace and conflict.”
Skills 4 Living was launched this week in Greater Manchester by the Unesco-partner non-profit Higher Health, which began the project six years ago in South Africa. This is the first time it has expanded outside Africa.
The curriculum will primarily be delivered online, although students will be expected to complete assessments by interacting in person with others. It will also include seminars on spotting fake news, staying safe on the internet, how to challenge racism, sexism and homophobia, gambling awareness and avoiding scams.
It aims to reach 10,000 young people in the city-region by September and has partnered with a number of higher education providers, including the University of Manchester, University of Salford and Manchester Metropolitan University.
There are plans for an expansion to other 16- to 25-year-olds including young offenders, military personnel and refugees, after a pilot this summer.
Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, said: “Preparing young people to lead confident, healthy and productive lives is key to their employability and long-term wellbeing. I’m proud that Greater Manchester’s young people will be the first in the UK to access this opportunity”.
The UK programme comes as industry leaders are thinking increasingly about how to recruit and retain talent from gen Z, who are expected to make up about 27% of the workforce this year.
Top consultancy firms including Deloitte and McKinsey have published detailed studies of this often misunderstood generation of digital natives.
Last month one of Britain’s leading accountancy firms, Forvis Mazars, launched a social skills course to teach gen Z lessons on “picking up the phone” and simulations of client meetings.
The founder of recruitment firm Patrick Morgan, James O’Dowd, said remote work and an increased reliance on texting had left many young hires “unprepared for the basics of working life”.
A survey of 3,000 employers in Greater Manchester in 2023 raised concerns that young recruits were missing “essential life skills” like empathy, time management, speaking to customers, problem-solving and critical thinking.
Ranote, the chair of Higher Health’s UK body, said companies were reporting that young recruits struggled with “face-to-face interviews, speaking on the phone – things that we took for granted”.
Data suggested gen Z had fewer “everyday but essential” communication skills than older generations, Ranote said, largely due to the advent of social media. “That is, without a shadow of doubt, the single biggest social cultural change of our time … their whole way of communicating is different to what ours was,” she added.
Ranote, who is also the clinical director for mental health at NHS Greater Manchester, said giving young people the skills and confidence to enter the workplace was also “pre-prevention” for reducing anxiety and depression.
She added: “The top three things that young adults are worried about are climate change, job success, and bullying and relationships.
“When I started in my career as a consultant in 2005, one in 10 young people had a diagnosable mental health condition. We’re now [at] one in five. That’s not okay. Could it have been prevented? Yes is the answer. This is a toolkit to prepare young people for, even in the space of 25 years, a very different global world.”
Ramneek Ahluwalia, the chief executive of Higher Health in South Africa and the UK, said studies by Harvard and Stanford Universities in the US had found that 85% of job success came from “soft skills”.
He added: “But if you look at the traditional education system … it’s all about hard skills. Let’s get a plumber out, let’s get an electrician out, let’s get a doctor out. The issue is [that] the world, as it is changing, is wanting a holistic youth, a person who is mental health strong.”
