The cross-Jobs and Skills Council (JSC) review to define generalist skills across the Australian economy will assess how generalist skills are represented in selected training packages and provide a roadmap to reduce duplication and inform future training product development.
Australia’s training system delivers generalist skills such as communication, teamwork and problem-solving across all industries but it does so in different ways. This inconsistency creates duplication across different industry areas, reduces clarity and makes it harder for skills to be recognised and transferred across roles, industries and qualifications.
This cross-JSC review will define, validate and analyse the generalist skills required across the Australian economy and it will assess how these skills are currently represented in selected training packages.
HumanAbility is delivering this project in collaboration with Future Skills Organisation (FSO), which is leading the project, and Service and Creative Skills Australia (SaCSA). It will provide a cross-industry perspective spanning human services, finance, technology, business, and the services and creative sectors.
Training package analysis will focus on:
- Community Services (CHC)
- Health (HLT)
- Sport, Fitness and Recreation (SIS)
- Business Services (BSB)
- Information and Communications Technology (ICT)
- Financial Services (FNS)
- Creative Arts and Culture (CUA)
The project scope includes:
- assessing relevant frameworks (Australian and international) to identify and define the generalist skills needed across the Australian economy, including how those skills relate to foundation skills
- determining existing coverage of generalist skills in selected training packages through analysis of existing units of competency and qualifications
- identifying duplication across training packages, qualifications and units of competency
- identifying gaps in existing products and priority product development
- validating findings with industry and working closely with Jobs and Skills Australia, the cross-JSC Generalist Skills Working Group and JSC-specific industry engagement mechanisms
- the creation of a roadmap, outlining the development and implementation of training products and over time the reduction in duplication across defined training packages.
This project will not develop or change training products. It provides the evidence and direction to inform future training product development and qualification reform activities.
Background Information
Generalist skills such as communication, critical thinking, teamwork, problem-solving and adaptability are essential across all industries. They underpin how people work, adapt to change and apply technical skills in real-world contexts.
Employers consistently report shortages in these capabilities, particularly as technology continues to reshape job roles and career pathways. Workforce plans across multiple industries point to this as a system-wide issue, not one confined to any single sector. There is no agreed framework around which generalist skills are required, nor a shared library of generalist skills. To date, the approach has been piecemeal. Generalist skills are not consistently designed, imported or contextualised across training packages.
Existing units of competency largely focus on tasks rather than skills which has led to significant duplication within the VET system. More than 2000 units of competency have over 90 percent overlap with at least one other unit and over 5000 have significant overlap.
There is no agreed cross-industry approach to how generalist skills are defined or applied within the training system. In many cases, they have been treated the same way as task-based competencies, resulting in fragmentation, duplication and gaps across training packages.
Moving towards a clearer definition of generalist skills is a significant enable of qualification reform. It will help simplify units of competency and reduce overlap and duplication across the training system.
During this activity we will work closely with Jobs and Skills Australia to maintain alignment with the National Skills Taxonomy as it evolves, identifying relationships between the identified generalist skills and emerging taxonomy structures to support future consistency across the system.