A LATENT PROFILE ANALYSIS OF COMPETENCE DEMANDS IN WORKPLACES AND SUPPLY IN HIGHER EDUCATION USING THE KOREAN YOUTH PANEL
The purpose of the present study was to investigate office workers' competencies that employees perceived to be important in their workplaces and the degree of helpfulness of universities as well as to scrutinize the gap between competence demand in the workplace and provision in higher education. Using the responses of bachelor's-degree holders working as office workers from the Korean Youth Panel data, a latent profile analysis was conducted with five competence categories each for their importance and university helpfulness. The analysis revealed four latent profiles. Further, paired t-tests were also conducted to examine the gap between competence importance and university helpfulness. Gaps were confirmed and partially confirmed in two profiles each. The results imply that it is necessary to consider the actual demands in the workplace when designing and planning competence or job programs in universities.
INTRODUCTION
What makes an organization valuable in a rich, high-end business market? The attributes can be ranked, but one that must not be disregarded is the competence of the members of an organization (Tripathi & Agrawal, 2014). Competence, which represents a set of knowledge, skills, and abilities essential for effective performance at the individual, team, and organizational levels, is regarded as the core of organizational competitiveness (Naquin & Holton, 2006). As relevant as the competence and performance of an organization is, competence refers closely to an individual's prospect of employment and value in a group. Because companies and institutions adjust their hiring policies based on actual competencies in alignment with the growing importance of competence management (Karimi et al., 2019; J. C. Lee & Lee, 2018; Starcie, 2012), applicants are expected to be equipped with on-site competencies.
Competence is important when hiring talent in a company, and the role of the university as a higher education institution also must change. In particular, the social demand for education to cultivate talented people who will lead a changing society must continue to increase. In response to these demands, higher education institutions should be able to help develop “authentic competencies” while providing educational programs that cultivate knowledge in traditional academic fields. Universities no longer teach students only the knowledge and skills of their major (Ritter et al., 2018). Beyond academic expertise, universities help students develop the specific competencies needed to attain better outcomes in life and work after graduation in response to the social demand for what is now considered an important role of the university, from student admission to school life, the career support system, employment, and postemployment management (Y. Y. Kim et al., 2010; G. H. Lee et al., 2010). Aligned with these needs of the times, Korean universities focus on the keywords “student success,” which dictates a wider range of performance from disciplinary skills and knowledge to various, vicarious experiences of business start-ups and employment; this helps promote students' performance after leaving campus. Competitive graduates turn into competitive workers who powerfully contribute to organizational performance (i.e., Pang et al., 2019). Organizations spend time and money on hiring and retraining new employees. However, if the competencies required to perform a job are learned sufficiently at the university, the organization's efficiency can be boosted, positively contributing to long-term organizational performance.
Therefore, it is necessary to examine what specific competencies are required in the fields in which students want to advance after graduation. One aspect of competence that is emphasized in this changing world is soft skills (Succi & Canovi, 2020), which are noted as 21st-century skills (Moore & Morton, 2017) and key competencies for a successful life and a well-functioning society (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2012). In the past, technical skills (or hard skills) were considered the key requirements for employment, but the shift from an industrial economy to an information and office society places a new emphasis on soft skills, such as integrity communication and flexibility (Nealy, 2005). Therefore, soft skills need greater attention in higher education curricula, and students should learn these skills early in their academic programs to prepare for their respective business careers.
The term office worker (i.e., a typical white-collar employee) refers to a job type in which the employee does clerical, mental, nonmanual work in an office. The occupational groups classified by the Korean Youth Panel (YP) use the Korean Employment Classification of Occupations (KECO) classification. KECO derives from major classification systems such as American Standard Occupational Classification (ASOC) of the United States and National Occupational Classification of Canada. The term office worker used in this study subsumes the category of office and administrative support occupations based on the ASOC. White-collar workers generally perform their duties at a desk and/or with computers. They are expected to possess more soft skills than specific hard skills (Hurrell, 2016; Korean Youth Panel Survey, 2005) in comparison with other professions. However, the competencies of office workers are often too comprehensively valued as representing literacy ability and routine skills. The rate of office workers in all professions is 32.7% among the respondents in the Korean YP Survey (2005), comprising the largest professional group within the panel. Despite the significant volume and prevalence of the profession, it is unclear whether the skills required for general office work are the same universally. The dynamics of individual competence often differ even within the same profession. The question thus arises whether proper training is provided for the undervalued and undefined competence of the office worker, which is ironically the profession that most students choose.
However, the problem with the current situation is that students preparing for employment cannot know exactly what competencies are required in the workplace. Therefore, in this study, we examine what employees who work in an office think are the most important competencies when performing their work. At the same time, we investigate the degree to which this might help colleges develop students' competency. The difference between these two indicators (competence importance and university helpfulness) can be used to explore how well the capacity development education currently being offered in universities reflects the actual field requirements.
In addition, this study focuses on the importance of job competency perceived by workers and the degree of helpfulness of the university, which can be combined in various ways depending on individual characteristics. For example, even for workers who work in similar contexts, documentation and computer skills are more important for some, whereas interpersonal competence is more important for others. Therefore, the importance of various work competencies perceived in the field can be combined in various ways, and subgroups based on this can occur. Furthermore, if there are various subgroups, we should determine to what extent the competency development education currently provided in college differs from the needs voiced in the actual field based on the difference between competency importance and college helpfulness for each group.
In this study, we suggest three distinctive approaches to answer the aforementioned questions. First, we discuss the dynamics of competencies from a person-centered perspective using latent profile analysis (LPA), a methodological technique that allows the inspection of the distribution and patterns of variables. Second, we adopt on-site employees' responses to explain experiential competency priorities that workers actually perceive in their duties. Third, we include the degree of helpfulness of universities in acquiring these competencies in the competence dynamics to discuss the latent profile in depth. In sum, we delve into (a) office workers' competencies that employees perceive to be important in their workplaces and the degree of helpfulness of universities and (b) scrutinize the gap between the work competence demand in the workplace and work competence provision in higher education.
Thus, the following research questions were devised:
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How many latent classes are distinguished according to competence importance and university helpfulness?
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What are the characteristics of the distinct latent classes?
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Are there gaps between competence importance and university helpfulness in each latent class?
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Importance of Competence and Soft Skills in the Workplace
Among the multitude of researchers who describe competence, Eilström and Kock (2008) review competence development in organizations and summarize three prevalent views. The first view considers competence to be an attribute of individual employees (Birkett, 1993, as cited in Rainsbury et al., 2002), the second views it as a requirement in certain jobs (Abraham et al., 2001), and the last integrates both views to focus on the interactions between employees and their respective jobs (Kock et al., 2007).
The first and second perspectives predominantly contribute to workplace competence research by exploring particular skills or job requirements as major variables. One major stream of competence literature centers on the identification or ranking of competencies within certain contexts and among certain stakeholders. For instance, Robles (2012) identifies 10 soft skills that executives perceive as the most integral workplace competencies, whereas others examine such competencies in relation to students and graduates (Rainsbury et al., 2002) and older workers (Hennekam, 2016). Still others define perception gaps among job seekers (e.g., students), employees, and employers (Bhattacharjee et al., 2013; Succi & Canovi, 2020). The second research stream emphasizes certain competencies as a lens through which to interpret organizational experiences (Clardy, 2008; Molleman & van der Vegt, 2007).
Despite the significance of the aforementioned studies, their findings may be constrained by a variable-centered perspective that fails to acknowledge the divergent dynamics of individuals. Contrariwise, the third perspective focuses on the intersection between individuals and their respective roles or jobs, viewing competence as a tool leveraged to efficiently perform in a job. Partly attributed to an individual's job competence, competence in use represents a dynamic exchange between individual capacity and relevant job requirements. This suggests that an individual's use of the individual's actual competence is affected by (a) individual factors, such as previous experiences and self-confidence (Illeris, 2006) and (b) workplace organizational characteristics, such as worker autonomy, participation, task characteristics, and feedback, and their impact on an individual's actual use of competence (Eilström, 2006; Kock et al., 2007).
These two views of competence can be defined in terms of so-called hard and soft skills. The former consists of domain-specific knowledge practically used in certain duties or professions. The latter are general competencies necessary to succeed in life (OECD, 2012), namely, “a dynamic combination of cognitive and metacognitive skills, interpersonal, intellectual and practical skills…[that] help people to adapt and behave positively so that they can deal effectively with the challenges of their professional and everyday life” (Haselberger et al., 2012, p. 67). Subordinates of soft skills (i.e., cognitive, behavioral, and metacognitive skills) can be understood through Birkett's (1993) taxonomy of cognitive and behavioral skills (see Figure 1 for details).
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 1; 10.56811/PIQ-21-0005
Several studies have been conducted on the importance of soft skills in the workplace (Deming, 2017; Klaus, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2010). Ritter et al. (2018) notes that soft skills can provide the necessary edge for students to find work in their chosen field. Klaus (2010) asserts that the absence of soft skills can sabotage even the most promising career regardless of technical ability and professional expertise. According to the study, only 25% of long-term job success depends on technical knowledge, whereas 75% of it relies on people skills. Another study shows similar evidence that individual success is predicated only 15% upon hard skills and 85% upon soft skills (John, 2010). In their longitudinal study, Shukla and Kumar (2017) suggest that soft skills, such as communication, leadership, team building, strategic and critical thinking, problem solving, interpersonal skills, and presentation are essential for employability. Cobanoglu et al. (2007) also conclude that hotel information technology managers predominately require soft skills. More particularly, communication was ranked as the most significant, ahead of critical thinking and knowledge of information technology. Increasingly seeking mature and well-adjusted employees, employers weigh soft skills as the top priority for entry-level job success (Gruzdev et al., 2018; Tang, 2019).
Vocational Competence Development in Higher Education
Recent research shows that, whereas potential employers strongly prefer applicants with strong interpersonal skills (Glenn, 2008; Mitchell et al., 2010), newly graduated applicants fall short of these expectations (National Union of Students, 2011). For this reason, employers believe that educators must teach students about cooperation in the workplace and customer service skills (Evenson, 1999; Ritter et al., 2018). In fact, soft skills represent the number one priority for many employers across diverse occupations and industries (Robles, 2012). To remain competitive, successful organizations need new employees with interpersonal skills not only in the technical workplace, but also in business fields (Cerezo-Narváez et al., 2018).
The skills required to perform a job in an organization can be improved through education and training. Capabilities can also be expressed in terms of learning outcomes. For example, the International Education Standards for Professional Accountants identify three components of the qualifying process: academic study, practical experience, and tests of professional competence. These three components are delivered in three different settings: (a) educational institutions (to develop the necessary capabilities), (b) the workplace (for practical experience), and (c) professional education programs (leading to tests of professional competence). Specifically, students' workplace experiences in college actually improve their adaptability when they enter the workplace, which not only brings satisfaction and success to the individual student, but also benefits the university (Perna & Thomas, 2008).
Although the roles of higher education in this situation are to teach real knowledge and develop an individual's talent, as the environment changes, the university cultivates the human resources required by society and reflects the needs of the times so that students can lead successful lives. For example, higher education supports students in preparing for future employment and contributes to the outcome of a college, such as a high performance index and a high employment rate (Baldwin et al., 2011). In addition, the curriculum consists of mechanical human fostering and focuses on practical or technical factors. Therefore, it is difficult for students to learn everything that they need to learn in college. If the current situation persists, the future of the university will be the same as any other institution in which preparing for employment is not an essential aspect of higher education. In addition, this will give rise to social problems concerning the existence of the university.
Based on this, it is necessary to identify the differences between the perception of success by university students and generally perceived student success. To reduce the gap, more specific discussion and efforts are needed to support each aspect of student success in the future (Perna & Thomas, 2008).
In the Korean context, research on competencies in higher education has evolved from studies that identify and model the competencies of college students (Y. Y. Kim et al., 2010; Noh & Lee, 2013) to those that apply them to higher education and evaluate them (Park et al., 2014). Y. Y. Kim et al. (2010) identify seven core competencies in higher education using competence modeling, investigate their importance, and inspect different education needs by school years to implement core competence in higher education. K. W. Kim (2016) derives four competence-enhancement programs based on the analysis of core competencies for college students according to the characteristics of learners (e.g., sex, major, campus life satisfaction, GPA, and achievement of extracurricular activities). G. H. Lee et al. (2010) surveyed the current level and expected level of awareness of five core competencies, namely, major, cultural, foreign language, basic math, and human communication skills, and analyzed differences depending on the characteristics of the students. In sum, previous studies commonly identify capabilities or analyze the needs of stakeholders around university education related to the identified competencies.
METHOD
Sample and Data Source
The Korean YP was started to provide information on the labor market entry of and migration process for young people to solve problems arising from youth unemployment, changes in the labor market, and mismatch of human resources. Since the preliminary survey was conducted in 2001, YP continues to contribute to the elimination of youth unemployment and establishment of employment policies, and follow-up surveys have been conducted of young people aged 15 to 29 years.
YP is the most suitable data set for the objectives of this study because it contains data on both college students and employees. This study can provide implications for the education and employment of young people by identifying the gap in competence arising from the transition from school to the working world through the competence required at work and the usefulness of university education.
This study focuses on office workers with a bachelor's degree. First, the total number of respondents in the YP was 10,206, of whom 5,228 (51.2%) were employed, and 4,978 respondents excluded from the analysis were enrolled in universities and graduate schools, unemployed, or did not answer the question. Next, 2,729 (52.2%) respondents had a bachelor's degree. The other 2,499 respondents excluded were high school graduates, junior college graduates, and master's degree or higher recipients, who did not fit the context of this study. Last, based on KECO, 1,622 workers in research, service, agriculture, and fishery jobs were excluded. Therefore, the data used in the final analysis were drawn from 1,107 working people.
Measures
The capabilities required to perform the task vary depending on the job and the industry field. YP examines this in 15 items (reading comprehension, documentation, computer skills, mathematical problem solving, peer communication, customer communication, collaboration, creative problem solving, adaptability, planning habit, self-directed learning, domain knowledge in profession, practical knowledge in profession, foreign language conversation, and foreign language literacy), which were scored on a five-point Likert-type scale to indicate how important employees perceived each factor to be.
We reconstructed various capabilities into a more concise form based on the competence skills hierarchy. This is because, among the 15 capabilities investigated by YP, several have similar features and may be redundant. Thus, the reconstruction allows similar capabilities to be included in the same category so as to be more intuitively compared and understood.
In this study, the competencies collected from the YP were recategorized into cognitive, behavioral, and metacognitive skills under soft skills and professional knowledge and foreign language under hard skills based on the competence skills hierarchy mentioned earlier in the theoretical background. For example, technical knowledge, skills, and abilities, which are a function of the job requirements (Birkett, 1993), come under cognitive skills. Among the 15 business capabilities of YP, reading comprehension, documentation, computer skills, and mathematical problem solving, which best describe cognitive areas, were included. The remaining categorizations are summarized in Table 1. Although YP measures under foreign language conversation and foreign language literacy fall under hard skills, the characteristics of the actual meaning of the questions are different from the knowledge in the specialized field; therefore, they are not classified as professional skills.
Data Analysis
The first purpose of this study was to identify subgroups categorized according to the level of office workers' competencies that employees actually perceived in their workplaces (i.e., competence importance) and the degree of helpfulness of universities in acquiring these competencies (i.e., university helpfulness). For this purpose, we conducted an LPA (a people-centered approach) and used Mplus for the analysis.
LPA is a representative person-centered approach of identifying homogeneous subgroups of samples based on observed continuous variables and examining the relationship between these group-specific correlates (e.g., distal variables). It classifies the groups of people in the sample into the optimal number of classes based on the information index, quality of information, and model comparison. Specifically, the information-based indices include the Akaike information criterion (AIC; Akaike, 1974), the Bayesian information criterion (BIC; Schwarz, 1978), and a sample-size adjusted BIC (ABIC; Sclove, 1987). Entropy is an indicator of the quality of classification with values between zero and one. Entropy is one when the number of groups is one and gradually decreases as the number of groups is two or more. An entropy of 0.7 or greater is considered good (Clark, 2010).
The Lo–Mendell–Rubin adjusted likelihood ratio test (LMR LRT; Lo et al., 2001) and the bootstrapped likelihood ratio test (BLRT; McLachlan & Peel, 2000) were used to determine the number of latent profiles. Finally, we used two more criteria: The first was that the identified latent profiles should be theoretically accountable. Researchers can find a latent class that may be unexpected but can be explained theoretically. We took into account the theoretical and practical meanings and the possibility of interpretation based on previous studies (Muthén, 2002) and did not accept a latent class that could not be explained. Second, if a latent class consisted of less than 5% or 25 members of the total sample (Berlin et al., 2014; Jung & Wickrama, 2008), it was not considered a group.
The second purpose of the study was to identify the gap between competence importance and university helpfulness. We conducted a paired-sample t-test using SPSS to address this. The t-test was conducted to determine whether there was a difference between the important competencies perceived by incumbents and the degree to which students benefit from college. Through this analysis, it is possible to explore what competencies are considered important in the workplace and to identify gaps in whether college students receive sufficient help in acquiring practical competencies at school. The t-test had the following implications. First, from the university's point of view, a realistic curriculum can be provided so that students can acquire and improve the competencies considered important in the workplace. Second, it can be used to increase organizational efficiency by recruiting and deploying talents with competencies that can be put into immediate practice at work by considering important competencies from the company's point of view.
RESULTS
LPA Results and Demographic Information
An LPA was conducted to identify the optimal number of latent profiles based on each of the five categories of competence importance and university helpfulness. As the number of profiles increased, the values of AIC, BIC, and ABIC gradually decreased (Figure 2). However, we stopped comparing the values because they continued to decrease even if the number of groups was sufficiently large. The p-values of LMR LRT and BLRT also continued to be significant and were not decisive indicators of the appropriate number of latent profiles.
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 1; 10.56811/PIQ-21-0005
Therefore, we examined whether the distinct groups could be explained theoretically. When classified into five or more subgroups, the values of LMR LRT and BLRT were not statistically significant. In addition, entropy was highest when classified into four profiles; therefore, model 4 was selected (Nagin, 2005; Nylund et al., 2007). Furthermore, with four latent profiles, the entropy (0.899) was closest to one (see Table 2).
The average age of the respondents was 35.1 years (SD = 4.1). Table 3 shows the demographic information of the respondents. The proportion of women (560, 50.6%) was slightly higher than that of men (547, 49.4%). Because YP targets college students and incumbents aged 15 to 29, the age groups of the sample included in this study were divided into 20s, 30s, and 40s; 816 of the total 1,107 respondents were in their 30s (74.7%).
The first profile included 125 respondents, with more males than females. Participants belonging to this profile were highly aware of the importance of language skills. University helpfulness was rated similarly to competence importance and was found to be balanced. The second profile included 290 respondents (26.1%). Those belonging to this profile had higher overall competence required to perform their tasks than the other three profiles. University helpfulness also showed a pattern similar to competence importance. The third profile included more than half of all the respondents, 567 (51.2%), and contained more females than males. Those belonging to this profile were found to perceive moderate rather than high or low competence importance and university helpfulness. Finally, the fourth profile contained 125 respondents, with more females than males. Participants belonging to the fourth profile perceived the competence importance of cognitive and behavioral skills as high, including the abilities to read and write documents and communicate and interact with customers. Through this, the fourth profile suggests that the skills needed to perform routine tasks are important. However, the university's helpfulness was rated significantly lower than in the other three profiles.
These results suggest that it is necessary to reconsider whether classes and job preparation activities at universities are helping students improve their actual job performance and soft skills. For example, participants in the first profile did not show much difference in their perceptions of competencies as important to work and the degree of helpfulness of the university. However, university helpfulness was rated significantly lower than competence importance in the fourth profile.
Results of the Paired-Sample t-Test
In this study, we explored latent profiles divided into different characteristics based on work competencies. Additionally, we sought to investigate the difference in perceptions between office workers and university students in each latent profile. The LPA confirmed that there are four subgroups. Figure 3 shows the results of the paired-sample t-test conducted to identify the gap in the degree of helpfulness of the university in acquiring these competencies.
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 1; 10.56811/PIQ-21-0005
An analysis of the mean difference between competence importance and university helpfulness among participants belonging to the first latent profile confirmed that there was a significant difference in behavioral skills (see Table 4). Behavioral skills consist of communication skills with peers and customers and creative problem-solving skills. Participants in this group perceived communication and creative problem solving as important competencies (t = 3.808, p < 0.05). However, the degree of helpfulness of the university was relatively low. Cognitive skills, metacognitive skills, professional knowledge, and language skills were not significantly different in the competencies that employees perceived to be important in their workplaces and the degree of helpfulness of the university.
The second latent profile showed significant differences in the competencies that employees perceived to be important in their workplaces and the degree of helpfulness of the university in inculcating all five skills. A higher degree of university helpfulness than importance at work was found for foreign language skills (t = −2.771, p < 0.05) and the opposite for the other four skills. As summarized in Table 5, the largest average difference was found in behavioral skills (t = 8.580, p < 0.05), the second largest in metacognitive skills (t = 6.229, p < 0.05), and the smallest in foreign language skills.
In the third latent profile, the ratings of both the level of competence importance and university helpfulness were moderate. Here, we found that the difference between the importance of competence in the workplace and the degree of university helpfulness was not significant for cognitive skills (t = 1.351, p = 0.117), but significant for the other four competencies. Cognitive skills included reading comprehension, documentation, computer skills, and mathematical problem solving. Those who belonged to the third latent profile valued the importance of performing relatively routine work at the workplace and perceived the degree of helpfulness of the university at a similar level (see Table 6).
Those who belonged to the fourth latent profile had significant differences in all five competencies, same as in the second latent profile (see Table 7). This latent profile showed a significantly different pattern from the three latent profiles described earlier.
First, the gap between the importance of competence at the workplace and the degree of helpfulness of the university was noticeably different for each. Behavioral skills were perceived to be more important than cognitive skills at the workplace, but at university, cognitive skills tended to be perceived as more helpful than behavioral skills. There were statistically significant differences in both behavioral (t = 7.092, p < 0.05) and cognitive skills (t = 1.351, p < 0.05). Second, language skills were significantly less important than other skills in the workplace, whereas the degree of helpfulness of the university was slightly lower (t = −7.060, p < 0.05). Third, the importance of professional knowledge was the highest, and there was a statistically significant difference from the degree of helpfulness of the university (t = 4.101, p < 0.05).
DISCUSSIONS
General Discussion
In this study, we conducted an LPA of the extent of office workers' competencies that employees perceived in their workplaces and the degree of helpfulness of universities in acquiring these competencies in South Korea. Based on this, the sample used in this study was divided into four subgroups. Despite all being white-collar workers expected to perform similar and routine tasks, the level of competence that workers consider to be relatively important when performing their work in their workplace differed.
Korea has created national competence standards (NCS, 2022) to systematize the contents of knowledge, skills, and attitude required to perform duties in an industry. In the NCS, the duties of office and administrative workers are to support and manage required tasks within and outside the organization so that members of the organization (or department) can perform their duties properly. The abilities required to perform this job include documentation (creation, management), data management, meeting operation and support, office administration, business management, office environment creation, office automation program usability, and groupware usability. It can be seen that these mainly correspond to the cognitive skills categorized in this study. However, white-collar workers also need to communicate with colleagues and have the ability to continuously learn and adapt to the organization's strategy. In this study, we focus on soft and hard skills and find a combination of various competencies that are considered important in an organization.
A paired-sample t-test was then conducted to determine whether the difference in competence importance and university helpfulness was statistically significant. Interestingly, in all four latent profiles, all the language skills were rated higher than the level of helpfulness of the university in terms of competence in the actual workplace. This makes it possible to gauge how much time and effort Korean university students invest in foreign language studies. English grade is one of the criteria for graduating from Korean universities, and this is true in the recruitment market as well. When submitting a resume, some companies do not accept applications if the applicants do not meet certain foreign language test standards. The sample in this study included office workers who were university graduates in Korea, which reflects the Korean context.
The degree of helpfulness of the university is also different among each latent profile. There was a difference in the results of the paired t-tests in terms of competence importance and university helpfulness. For example, the first latent profile showed a significant difference only in behavioral skills, but the second profile showed a difference in all five skills (cognitive, behavioral, metacognitive, professional knowledge, and foreign language skills).
Implications
The following implications can be drawn from these results based on individuals, universities, and organizations. First, individuals need to be concerned about their aptitudes, skills, and areas of interest. Specifically, it is necessary to clarify the purpose of developing a career in a field after graduating and determine what competencies one needs to develop further to achieve this.
Second, universities need to prepare curricula aligned with the field to enhance students' employment capabilities and increase their adaptability to the environment in which they will work. The results of this study confirm that the level of helpfulness of the university was rated significantly lower than the level of competence importance. In addition to expertise in the field of study, it is necessary to find ways to further strengthen education on skills with help from universities so that students can demonstrate their competence in their fields after graduation. This study provides practical implications for on what colleges and universities should focus to enhance actual job competence in students preparing for employment and increase their applicability in the field. The paired-sample t-test confirms that there is a difference in the importance of competence as perceived by workers and the degree of helpfulness of university training. Based on the results of this study, university professors and practitioners will be able to apply field-oriented educational programs, such as industry-coupled problem-based learning, to improve their importance in the field. By linking the industry and school, actual tasks in the field can be developed as learning scenarios so that learners can improve their problem-solving capabilities that reflect social demand by solving practical, real-life problems.
Third, it is necessary to change the recruitment procedure to focus on the individual's competence and performance at the organizational level. Companies in Korea primarily recruit new employees for large-scale public employment twice a year and tend to focus on qualifications rather than interests or talents. Students rarely know what specific competencies they will be expected to perform well on the job, and colleges, too, do not adequately train them to develop such competencies. Therefore, it would be better to change the recruitment process so as to hire the right person based on the competencies that they must possess to perform a specific job. This will help organizations reduce losses resulting from turnover and choose employees with the potential to achieve high performance.
Last, this study holds the following theoretical and practical implications. The study is meaningful in that it conducts an exploratory analysis of the capabilities and soft skills of office workers using a person-centered approach. Most previous studies analyze their impact on the performance of organizations and workers by identifying the antecedent factors of competence development or treating competence as a variable. Although the current study recognizes the value of previous research, it is important to analyze latent profiles, considering that soft skills are becoming increasingly important and various combinations of competencies can be required in a job.
Limitations and Directions for Future Research
This study has some limitations despite the significant implications. First, we conducted an exploratory analysis of work-related competence and soft skills for office workers in Korea. Therefore, although the study closely examined office work, the research results cannot be fully generalized to other jobs, considering that the importance of soft skills, such as metacognition and interpersonal skills, is increasing in addition to that of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to perform a job. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the study to various samples from different occupation groups, jobs, and educational backgrounds in future studies.
Second, this study uses data from a Korean youth panel. There is a limit to the generalizability of the study results because the sample consisted only of people aged 15 to 29 years. The sample included in the youth panel was appropriate for the purpose of this study, that is, to explore problems such as mismatches that occur in the process of transitioning from school to the labor market. In a follow-up study, it is necessary to expand the age group to include the middle-aged and elderly and explore whether the importance of work competency is perceived differently by age. In addition, it is possible to draw out meaningful implications for the Korean labor market by securing samples that include more diverse industries and job types so as to explore whether the importance of competency differs depending on the job type.
Competence Skills Hierarchy
Distribution of Work Values Scores for the Four Latent Profiles
Results of the Paired-Sample t-Test
Contributor Notes
JINJU LEE (PhD) is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Educational Research. Her research interests include learning agility, adaptability, organizational learning, work values, work engagement, and individual diversity. Email: pearlee87@gmail.com
JINJU LEE (PhD) is a post-doctoral researcher of the department educational technology at Hanyang University. Her research interests are instructional design, problem solving, and failure-based learning. Email: leejinju@hanyang.ac.kr
YUNSOO LEE is an assistant professor in the department of educational technology at Hanyang University. His research interests are organizational behavior, career development, work engagement, and psychometrics. Email: leoyunsoolee@gmail.com
JI HOON SONG is a professor and department head of the department of educational technology at Hanyang University. His research interests are in the areas of cross-cultural learning organization, learning-based knowledge creation, and organizational behaviors. He has published more than 90 research articles in the areas of human resource development, learning organization, and organization development. Email: jhsong77@hanyang.ac.kr
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2021S1A5C2A03088191).
