Soft Skills in a Hard Labour Market: The Case of Greece

During the last twenty years, modern policies for employment at the national and supranational level include the concept of the “Skills Society” among their priorities. Historically, the strategy of increasing the intensity of employment through more flexible work organization has decisively favoured the strengthening of multi-level, continuous and flexible training policies. Some of its new central signifiers, such as competitiveness and flexibility, are immersed in actual working conditions and obviously contribute to the formation of a new reality for both the employee and the employer, as well as their skill needs. The tendency is to enhance employability through the strong correlation of employment and training, the related re-prioritizations at the level of supranational strategies, the effects on the relevant national policies and the mediations of the transformations in the organization of interests and of the “specialized” policy proposals form the new influential technocracy. The discussion draws on qualitative research conducted using semi-structured questionnaire interviews through “purposive sampling”. Drawing on the research findings, the chapter explores the relation between employability and skill and the extent to which the discussion on skill society reflects the real life of the Greek labour market.