Developing Key Employability Skills for Health & Social Care Roles

This essay discusses the critical employability skills needed for success in health and social care professions. It emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence, active listening, teamwork, setting boundaries, flexibility, empathy, critical thinking, communication skills, tolerance, and a positive...Read More

Academic and Employability skills
Name
Professors’ name
Institution
Date

Introduction
Health and social care in a sector that is very sensitive. This is so because it involves dealing
with people. It is always required that when dealing with clients and patients then health and/or
social care worker has his/her heart into it. It's a very sensitive career line in society as it involves
dealing with people’s lives.
Before someone is employed the employer must ensure that they have the required set of skills to
qualify in that particular career line.
This write-up is going to discuss some of the employability skills that are related to health and
social care professionals. It is going to be an analysis of some of the skills that someone needs to
have and/or develop in order for them to seek employment as health and social care workers.
Employability skills needed in health and social care profession
Emotional intelligence (EQ)
Emotional intelligence is a very important skill that a health and/or social care worker needs to
have. Emotional intelligence requires that a person possesses high levels of self-awareness,
empathy as well as significant sensitivity to other people. A health or social care worker should
be in a position to understand others. Emotional intelligence is the ability to balance what you
know, the facts about a certain condition say mental illness, its signs, and symptoms and what
one intuits, having an ability to understand what is said by a patient and/or client (Weare, 2010
p.40).

Basically emotional intelligence is more of identifying what you are feeling, knowing how to
interpret and understanding how your emotions are likely to have an impact on other people and
acting accordingly without causing them any damage in the process.
Emotional intelligence is a very important skill that health and social care workers need to
develop for them to be in a position to compete competitively for employment.
Employment in the health and/or social care sector requires that one has a skill of emotional
intelligence.
Active Listening
It is required that health and/or social care worker masters the skill of effective active listening.
Active listening is a skill that entails reflecting back to what the clients say and actively engaging
in the conversation (Kamerāde & Paine, 2014 p.17). Active listening is very crucial because it
enables one to establish trust as well as rest as early as possible in the conversation. In such cases
clients and/or patients often feel comfortable and can express their darkest fears and that they
feel without any trouble.
Active listening is a skill that a health or social care worker needs to master. It involves
developing a pattern of listening to that keeps you fully engaged in a conversation in a positive
way. In addition to this, it entails paraphrasing and reflecting back to what a person says and
thereby withholding any judgments and/or advice until they finish talking.
Active listening is often characterized by aspects such as being neutral and in that case
nonjudgmental, patience, asking questions and seeking for clarifications where possible and
summarizing and reflecting back on what a person says.

This is a very employability skill in health and/or social care profession because it enables a
person to connect with their patient and/or client and in that way is in a position to understand
them and provide the required solution.
Teamwork
Team work is the ability to work with others. A health or a social care worker should be a team
player. This means that they should have the ability to work well with other individuals and/or
colleagues.
Setting boundaries
Health and/or social care professionals can be really challenging. There would be a probability
that a person is likely to have numerous issues in their workplace that can really disturb them
emotionally. Well, taking such stress back at home and letting them interfere with your personal
life is not healthy and is highly unacceptable (Baumann, Ionescu, Chau, 2011 p.88)
It is therefore important that a health or social care knows how to set boundaries between their
work and their personal life.. By setting clear boundaries between work and personal life then
one will be in a position to live a healthy life without being bothered by issues that should not be
bothering them in the first place.
Employment in this profession line requires that a person masters the skill of setting boundaries.
It is very crucial because it ensures that one is not consumed by their profession.
Flexibility

Flexibility is a very important employability skill in the health and/or social care profession.
Flexibility entails being in a position to cover an extra shift, a different shift comfortably without
causing any problems whatsoever.
Flexibility is very key. Employers are often attracted to employees that have a high degree of
flexibility. There are different career fields in health and social care professionals. Flexibility
also entails being in a position to comfortably work in all these different career fields without
any form of difficulties.
Empathy
Empathy is less of a skill and more of an art. Empathy is, however, a very important skill that
employers would seek in the health and/or social care profession. As mentioned earlier, this is a
line of profession that involves dealing with people. Understanding these people is, therefore, the
primary goal.
Empathy enables a health and social care worker to be in a position to identify themselves with
others and to understand them by putting themselves in their position.
Empathy is a really crucial employability skill in this line of a profession because of some of the
following reasons;
First and foremost, empathy provides one with an understanding of how other people feel and
why they act and/or behave in a certain way. This, therefore, provides a person with clarity on
the correct way to help a person.
Moreover, empathy shows that one cares. Care and actions of compassion are the backbones of
the health and/or social care profession.

Critical thinking
Critical thinking is one of the most essential skills that are required by health and/or social care
professions.
Critical thinking is the unique ability to think clearly as well as rationally and being in a position
to carefully understand logic connections between various ideas and/or thoughts.
Through the skill of critical thinking health and social/care professions are in a position to
evaluate complicated situations by employing logical thought and in that way coming up with the
best solution in dealing with various issues or problems that might arise.
A person who employs critical thinking can be trusted to make the right decision because they
first weigh the situation at hand before taking any action (Tariq & Durrani, 2012 p.61).
Employers in most cases often require employees that have this skill. It enables a health and/or
social worker understands various links between different or similar ideas as well as identifies
likely inconsistencies and errors in reasoning. With this skill then an employee can be in a
position to examine issues as well as problems that are facing clients and/or patients and
recommend an appropriate action that would possibly remedy the situation.
Communication skills
Another very vital skill for health and/or social care profession is communication.
Communication plays an important role especially in understanding the client’s inner thoughts as
well as reasons as to why they behave or act in a certain way. Health and social care workers
should be in a position to communicate in different ways and with different people without bias.
A health care or a social care profession is supposed to be as transparent as possible when

dealing with clients and/or patients. This can only be achieved if and only if they possess good
communication skills.
Different kinds of conversations need to be approached differently. The manner in which health
care and/or social care worker approaches a conversation is very crucial as it can determine
whether or not the conversation would be successful. The goal is this line of profession is to
extract vital information that would facilitate and help in solving the problem of a client or
patient. It is, therefore, necessary that an employee possess this skill as it would hasten their
problem-solving.
Tolerance
Health and social care workers interact with and deal with different clients and people from
different backgrounds and ethnicities. As a result of this, they should be in a position to tolerate
these people and also understand their differences.
Employers always seek to employ persons who would be in a position to tolerate and
accommodate the different people and not judging them based on their culture or ethnicities.
Respect for other individuals especially patients is really important in this line of profession.
Positive mental attitude and being in a position to deal with pressure
A positive mental attitude involves understanding that there is a probability of having tough
times ahead but still being the faith that everything will be alright. Employers often seek to find
such persons for employment. Being optimistic in a career line full of challenges and obstacles is
something exceptional,

In addition to this, employers also need employees that can be in a position to withstand
pressure. Pressure is a daily routine for many health cares and social care workers. A person
seeking employment in this line of a profession should therefore not only be in a position to
handle the high pressure associated with the daily activities in this career but should also be in a
position to thrive in this kind of pressure.
Conclusion
Employment in the health and/or social care line of the profession means a lifetime commitment
to commitment towards serving as well as ensuring the overall well-being of other individuals in
the society. It is therefore important that employees seeking employment as well as employers
who seek to employ individuals in this sector have a certain level of skill that would enable them
to do so.
As mentioned earlier, this line of profession is very sensitive as it involves dealing with people
and addressing some of the issues that affect their lives. It is therefore very important that one
ensures that they possess skills such as communication skills, tolerance, critical thinking,
emotional intelligence and flexibility among others so that they can be part of the solutions that
people in need want in this life of profession (Gospel & Lewis, 2011 p.79).

References
Baumann, M., Ionescu, I., and Chau, N., 2011. Psychological quality of life and its association
with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European
faculties. BMC Psychiatry, 11(1), p.63.
Durrani, N. and Tariq, V.N., 2012. The role of numeracy skills in graduate
employability. Education+ Training, 54(5), pp.419-434.
Gospel, H. and Lewis, P.A., 2011. Who cares about skills? The impact and limits of statutory
regulation on qualifications and skills in social care. British Journal of Industrial
Relations, 49(4), pp.601-622.
Kamerāde, D. and Paine, A.E., 2014. Volunteering and employability: implications for policy
and practice. Voluntary Sector Review, 5(2), pp.259-273.

Weare, K., 2010. Mental health and social and emotional learning: Evidence, principles,
tensions, balances. Advances in school mental health promotion, 3(1), pp.5-17.