Effective communication is an essential part of employment in the contemporary economy

While we all know that language and communication are a high priority for intervention for a person with an impairment, there is much less acknowledgement of their importance in the general activities of adults. However, in the modern world, communication is essential to social interaction and in the contemporary workplace, where the dominance of the service sector is changing the way people work.

Manual and technical jobs, in production and manufacturing, either did not require literacy or required it in ways that were about using complex and consistent documentation. White collar roles were very hierarchical and relied on very formal modes of communication and contractual structures, requiring high levels of precise literacy. However, the shift to the service sector has replaced many of the former industries, and increasing standards of regulation in others like construction have changed the way people work.

Greater weight is given to customer service and regulatory compliance through dynamic processes with more responsibility for individuals within organisations rather than at the top. More complex roles as part of customer service mean communicating across continents and within countries to meet customer expectations in quite different structures to historic personal interaction. Communication has become core to the contemporary workplace where it would have once been more pragmatic.

This is recognised in the expectations of employers in the midst of the proliferation of skills expected of young people. Literacy and numeracy are taken for granted, and so often fall short of expectations, but many other skills or ‘literacies’ are promulgated by interest groups, employers and educators: Digital skills, financial literacy, basic skills, statistical literacy, life skills, health literacy, functional skills, computer literacy and of course communication skills.

But the recent Lords’ Select Committee Report on Social Mobility in the Transition from School to Work identified something within the proliferation. Not only is literacy recognised as more fundamental than other aspects, but:

“When employers talk about literacy, they actually mean the ability to communicate effectively.”

In educational terms there is a focus on demonstrating literacy by passing exams, but that is not really what employers are aiming at. In contemporary service roles, the customer can choose the medium of communication from a range of options, including social media. And so the requirements of employers are not about formal writing of a particular kind but being able to respond, like a chameleon, to the demands of the situation.

This shift in employer expectations has been matched in research interests in the variation in language ability and development. The pathologising of developing children as having a specific language impairment (SLI) has been shown to serve those who want to study pathology and ration limited intervention resources. It has become clear that however language ability is measured, it follows a continuum of varying ability, but it also has different components, not least the pragmatic and reasoning components.

For all the focus in some circles on details of grammar or punctuation, the key to whether this is important, is if it compromises the effectiveness of communication. Any given communication in a business setting needs to empathise with the concerns of another, and give them confidence that the issue is being understood and clear about action. Where the audience for communication is more than one person, and in fact contains a wide range of people it needs to be sensitive to that audience in order to communicate effectively.

Our research in the population of children growing up in the UK shows wide disparities in the language development from children of different social backgrounds. Skills like reading, reasoning and vocabulary at different ages of middle childhood show a pronounced social gradient, most strongly associated with their mother’s level of academic education. But there is also an effect of household poverty additional to the effect of education.

We also notice differences that are not about social disadvantage, that girls have an early advantage in these skills, but that this is not maintained in older children. There is something about the way children develop in our society which leads boys to develop communication skills later than girls, although there is evidence that they make up some of the ground as young adults.

It is consistently observed that later born children (i.e. those with older siblings) have less developed language skills on these formal ability tests. However, the tests used in the large studies of populations tend to be very much individual assessments very similar to the idea of verbal IQ – more pragmatic skills of social communication are not tested and could be expected to reverse the pattern of eldest child advantage.

We know that children develop their communication skills in response to their environment, but while gender and siblings are adaptive responses to difference, social differences lead to diminished prospects. And the evidence is that the gaps in language ability associated with social disadvantage grow as children get older, becoming more entrenched as the wider wealth and network of their family and peer group comes into play. A more socially ranging environment will also offer more opportunities to learn pragmatic skills of interaction in diverse contexts which are relevant in employment.

Given what employers say about their needs of recruiting young people, this points to a substantial barrier in social mobility, limiting their ‘life chances’. So government policy, through initiatives like the Early Intervention Foundation, is trying to redress the balance, with the premise that anything done early on in children’s lives will reap much greater benefits later in life.