DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND HUMANITIES

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Second Term, AY 2020-2021

Course Code EEP 3

Course Description English for Employability
Prerequisite EEP 2
Credits 2 units; 36 hours (Lecture)
Mode of Delivery Online
Lesson/Topic Introduction to the New Metrics in the Industry 4.0 Labor
Market
Micro Learning At the end of the lesson, students must be able to:
Outcome/s  discuss the nature and processes of the Industry 4.0 labor
market;
 identify and describe new metrics or skills needed in the
Industry 4.0 labor market; and
 demonstrate ability to assess themselves in tailoring these
new metrics to finding job placements.
Assessment Measure/s Gap Filling worksheet

Video Transcript  Hi, everyone! Good morning! As in business context, we say ‘Good
morning’ a lot. I mean, always. This is Myron Cubillan, a faculty
member from the Department of Communication and Humanities.
This week’s lesson is an Introduction to the New Metrics in the
Industry 4.0 Labor Market. At the end of the lesson, you must be
able to discuss the nature and processes of the Industry 4.0 labor
market; identify and describe new metrics or skills relevant to the
industry; and demonstrate ability to assess yourself in tailoring
these new metrics to finding job placements.

UNDERSTANDING THE INDUSTRY 4.0 LABOR MARKET

This lesson introduces you to the Industry 4.0 labor market. It

explores human capabilities and skills development as the new metrics
needed by future-ready workforce. In light of highlighting skills, not
job titles, as the new currency in the labor market, you will be led to
understanding the importance of relevant skills you need to be
employable and to find job placement.

Relative attention is given to English language proficiency and its

dialectical relationship to the concept of employability. Given with the
changing dynamics of global labor market, it is an imperative to put
premium on skills for productivity—communication and soft skills,
in particular.

Provided that various literatures consider communication and soft

skills as important attributes to graduate’s employability in the
VUCA labor market landscape, the concluding section lays down the
foundation of significantly optimizing your English skills to become
adaptive in the VUCA world.

NEW METRICS IN THE INDUSTRY 4.0 LABOR MARKET

With the rapid changes in contemporary society brought about by

technology, the changing nature of work has a ‘disruptive impact on
workers, labor markets and organizations’ (Ernst & Young, 2018).
This paradigm shift informs the necessity of workers and
organizations to adapt. The future-ready workforce needs to be
exposed in reimagining and rethinking the importance of skills for jobs
of the future with this changing dynamics of the Industry 4.0 labor
market.

New Metrics: Skills as the New Currency

As argued by Jagannathana, Rab & Macleanc (2019), future-ready
workforce needs to secure the following necessary and relevant skills,
to wit: basic digital skills and literacy; learnability skills; skills needed
for greening economies; skills required for engaging in Industry 4.0
occupations; skills for next-generation infrastructure and services;
and skills for technology-infused manufacturing sectors. For our
purpose, their study stresses the market value of broad-based soft skills
which helps improving workplace effectiveness. These skills, which
will be discussed in full-swing in the following lesson, include
teamwork, problem-solving, creativity, and design-thinking. The
aforementioned skills are very important and argued as having far-
reaching impact on the future trajectories of work.

In light of the waves of change occurring in global labor markets being

driven by the pervasive impact of disruptive technologies on
economies and societies, there is a need to reconsider unique challenges
and new opportunities that this change has come to offer. With the
initial thought that new technologies will somehow displace people in
the workplace, there is a forward-thinking view that this will be
accompanied by gains in giving value and augmenting human
capabilities and soft skills such as creativity, effort and initiative,
critical thinking and design thinking and negotiation skills which are
all contributory to the diverse contexts of problem-solving in the
workplace.

Putting premium on productivity, creation of new jobs is an

imperative highlighting ‘the importance of investing in a skilled
workforce and ensuring that workers are equipped with specialized
skills required for working with new technologies’ (p.2). The United
Nations International Labor Organization’s Global Commission on
the Future of Work (as cited by Jagannathana, Rab & Macleanc; 2019)
states that ‘Today’s skills will not match the jobs of tomorrow and
newly acquired skills may quickly become obsolete.’ The greening of
our economies will create millions of jobs as we adopt sustainable
practices and clean technologies but other jobs will disappear as
countries scale back their carbon- and resource-intensive industries’
(p.2). This paves way to ILO’s following important recommendations:
(1) increasing investment in people’s capabilities; (2) increasing
investment in the institutions of work; and (3) increasing investment
in decent and sustainable work. In short, there is a necessity to invest
in human capital skills development.

The Relationship between English Language Proficiency and

Employability
According to Cabigon (2015), the Philippines is regarded as one of the
largest English-speaking states in the world with majority of its
population having fluency, to some extent, in the English language.
This English language proficiency has become one of the country’s
drivers to become one of the emerging economies in Southeast Asia.

English has become an important part in the Philippine higher

education curriculum. Being one of the official languages in the
country, it becomes an important tool for social mobility, particularly
in finding job placements in the local and global labor market. English
is taught as a means of communication in the early part of tertiary
studies in most of the state and private higher education institutions
in the country. Behind from its Asian neighbors, the British Council
reported that the Philippines needs to step up its efforts in developing
English language proficiency as a vital skill in the workforce through
enhancing and sharing best practices of teaching and learning the
language. Being an English-speaking nation, the Philippines sets its
distinct advantage in the ASEAN economic integration. To
strengthen its potential, the country needs to further build on the
English skills among its young workforce.
This trajectory is mainly informed by the dialectical relationship
between English language proficiency and employability, supported
by contentions in various literatures that ‘communication skills are
highly valued as a graduate attribute for employability’ (Centre for
the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne; 2014
(p.5). With focus on aspects of oral and written communication skills
supported with relevant tasks and activities anchored from CSU core
values from entry to exit, students are expected to enhance their
English language skills needed for employability after graduation.

There are a number of skills relevant to graduate employability which

will be discussed in details in the following lesson, but this section
focuses only on English language proficiency as a value-added skill.
In light of considering English language proficiency as a market value,
there is a need to understand how this relates or is linked, in part or
in whole, to the concept of employability.

Employability
As defined and described by Knight & York (2004; cited in Centre for
the Study of Higher Education’s Report, 2014), employability is:

A set of achievements - skills, understandings and personal attributes

– that make individuals more likely to gain employment and be
successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the
workforce, the community and the economy (p. 4).

Using this broad definition of employability, Knight and York (2004)

developed the ‘USEM Model’ of the components comprising
employability. The model emphasizes the interrelated nature of skills
and attributes that together constitute a graduate’s employability:

Understanding (of disciplinary subject matter and how

organizations work);

Skillful practices (academic, employment, and life in general);

Efficacy beliefs (reflects the learner’s notion of self, their self-belief,

and the possibility for self-improvement and development);

Metacognition (complements efficacy, embraces self-awareness, how

to learn and reflection. It encompasses knowledge of strategies for
learning, thinking and problem solving, and supports and promotes
continued learning/lifelong learning).
Cole and Tibby (2013) assert that a successful definition of what
employability is must also include what it is not. They provide the
following broad definition:

Employability - what it is
• It is a lifelong process.
• It applies to all students whatever their situation, course or mode of
study.
• It is complex and involves a number of areas that interlink.
• It is about supporting students to develop a range of knowledge,
skills, behaviors, attributes and attitudes which will enable them to be
successful not just in employment but in life.
• It is an institution-wide responsibility.
• It is about making the components of employability explicit to
students to support their lifelong learning.

Employability - what it is not

• It is not about replacing academic rigor and standards.
• It is not necessarily about adding additional modules into the
curriculum.
• It is not just about preparing students for employment.
• It is not the sole responsibility of the careers department.
• It is not something that can be quantified by any single measure.

Adaptability and Flexibility in the VUCA Labor Market

Landscape

What is VUCA? It was first coined at the graduate school for future
generals in Army War College (Johansen and Euchner, 2013; as cited
by Nandram and Bindlish, 2017). Introduced thereafter in the
entrepreneurship context by the New York Times columnist, Thomas
Friedman, since then, it has become one of the buzzwords in social
sciences.

Volatility : Changes happen in an exponential speed;

Uncertainty : Giving solutions to any problem has become
ambivalent—i.e. once appropriate solution before might not anymore
applicable today;
Complexity : As Marshall McLuhan points out ‘The world has
become a global village’ influenced by these technological advances,
yet exploring its granularity has become very complex;
Ambiguity : Giving way to pluralistic views of every social reality,
where people from different social positioning bring their own
analyses to the table. There is hardly one way for explaining any social
phenomenon.

Along the backdrop of some philosophies relatively saying that ‘life is

both a journey and a struggle’ (Nandram and Bindlish, 2017;p.vii),
the VUCA world is not a threat but an opportunity for self-
development. Going with a more optimistic and forward-thinking
view, living mindfully in this VUCA world is a necessity. With these
rapid changes in our social realities caused by this interdiscursive
dynamics of, as mentioned by Lawrence (2013; cited by Nandram and
Bindlish, 2017), digitization, connectivity, trade liberalization, global
competition, innovation, technological breakthroughs, mobility of
people, globalization, and so forth, our role as job seekers, then, who
possessed this workforce readiness is ‘to be fluid, flexible and adaptive’
with these changing dynamics.

This is the very reason that adaptability or flexibility is a very

important skill in this VUCA labor market landscape. Hence, the
rhetorical question of ‘How to cope with Volatility, Uncertainty,
Complexity and Ambiguity in any organization or workplace?’ makes
sense by approaching and managing it through ‘integrative self-
management’ (Nandram, S. & Bindlish, P. (2017). After all,
improving one’s human capabilities to achieve such decent and
sustainable work is a personal promise, responsibility, and journey (or
struggle). The role of other stakeholders such as government agencies,
job providers, academe, family, and other social institutions is to
provide us multi-layered opportunities enabling us to improve
ourselves, particularly in the world of work. An important contention
to consider here is that this journey is not easy, linear nor achievable
overnight, but a lifelong process. That is, self-assessment of our
individual strengths and weaknesses towards becoming competent,
service-oriented, morally-upright, and socially-responsible human
capital informs how we design and create our own personal brand for
career readiness and success.

TAKEAWAY
As a starting point since skills are the new metrics of Industry 4.0
labor market, we need to optimize our prominent skillset and enhance
further our least prominent skillset through immersing ourselves in
social practices where we could optimally improve our human
capabilities.
On that note, being ‘workforce-ready and job enabling English
proficient’ along with the skills of adaptability and flexibility in the
micro helps addressing macro-concerns of unemployment,
underemployment, and unequal opportunities in the Industry 4.0
world of work.

• For your assessment, please work on the task provided to you by

your instructor via CSU Masao LMS or Facebook.

REFERENCES
English for Employability (EEP 3) Learning Guide (2020). Department of
Communication and Humanities. College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Caraga State University.

• That ends our lecture-discussion video for this week’s episode. I hope
that you have learned something from this week’s lesson. Should you
have any questions, please leave us your comments and feedback via
Discussion Forum in your Masao LMS. Again, this has been Mr.
Cubillan. We’re all in this together, apart. Enjoy learning and keep
safe everyone!

-end of the video transcript-

*Color transition = Slide transition