Step Two: Securing Input from Employers on Preliminary Workplace Expectations

ADP preliminary workplace expectations were circulated among actual front-line managers in a variety of industries such as health care, gaming, high-tech manufacturing, information technology, law, television, shipping and transportation, retail, and financial services.

It is important to note that rather than asking employers to discuss desirable employee traits in the abstract, ADP made a deliberate effort to establish or refute potential connections between what students learn in high school and what knowledge and skills are necessary to be successful in the workplace.

The employers confirmed the importance of the content of the preliminary benchmarks. They also verified the ETS finding that a majority of the best jobs do in fact require some education beyond high school.

ADP then refined the preliminary set of workplace expectations to reflect the feedback from those employer interviews, while defining preliminary postsecondary expectations as well.