Poor writing skills leaving employers unable to hire

Poor writing skills are making it hard for employers to fill vacancies, a study by the National Commission for Further and Higher Education found. The national employee skills survey found that four out of 10 vacancies were reported to be hard to fill. Clerical support workers, sales workers and craft workers are among the hardest to find. The survey identified shortcomings in written communication as the main reason for vacancies not being filled (32.9 per cent), followed by lack of technical skills (32.1 per cent), poor problem-solving (30.9 per cent) and lacklustre teamwork (29.3 per cent). The commission said this generally matched the skills considered as important by employers, namely oral communication (78.7 per cent), teamwork (78.6 per cent) proficiency in English (74.4 per cent) and customer handling (72.3 per cent). Employers, the study found, responded to hard-to-fill vacancies by increasing the workload of other staff (61.5 per cent) or outsourcing work (27.7 per cent). In addition, 27.6 per cent of respondents reported difficulties in meeting customer service objectives and 27.3 per cent lost business or orders to competitors as a result of hard-to-fill...