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Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS)
SCANS was appointed by the Secretary of Labor to determine the skills that young people need to succeed in the workforce. The Commission’s fundamental purpose was to encourage a high-performance economy characterized by high-skill, high-wage employment.
SCANS consists of workplace competencies and a foundation of skills:
WORKPLACE COMPETENCIES--effective workers can productively use:
- Resources -- know how to allocate time, money, materials, space, and staff.
- Interpersonal skills -- able to work on teams, teach others, serve customers, lead, negotiate, and work well with people from culturally diverse backgrounds.
- Systems -- understand social, organizational, and technological systems; able to monitor and correct performance; can design or improve systems.
- Technology -- understand how to select equipment and tools, apply technology to specific tasks, and maintain and troubleshoot equipment.
FOUNDATION OF SKILLS--competent workers in the high-performance workplace need:
- Basic Skills -- reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, speaking and listening.
- Thinking Skills -- the ability to learn, to reason, to think creatively, to make decisions, and to solve problems.
- Personal Qualities -- individual responsibility, self-esteem and self-management, sociability, and integrity.
