Social Workers Skills - Essay Example

The paper "Social Workers Skills" is a delightful example of an essay on human resources. Social work is a profession that deals with assisting people to improve their personal and collective well-being. In broader terms, it enables the community to be empowered in a way that they use their locally available resources to resolves the problems amongst themselves such as poverty, domestic violence, and unemployment issues.

A social worker should have excellent collaboration skills with the community. He/she identifies the needs of the community through interaction with the locals and through that he/she finds out how the gaps present could be filled and with the aid of the people in that community, to find a permanent solution. One of the key elements in a social worker is communication. Communication is the process through which people exchange information between or among themselves through the use of standard symbols, behavior or signs, this can be either verbal or written. Being able to communicate and understand workmates is the first step. Without communication, it becomes impossible to access the needs of an individual effectively. For information to flow, the literacy level is a key factor. The level of literacy may mitigate or worsen an individual’s work depending on its level.

It is crucial for a social worker to have the intuition to help them understand the tension in the environment. This implies that he/she should have the skills to determine what ails the community in general. Before initiating the intervention strategy, he/she should identify the resources to be used to solve the crisis. For a social worker's expertise to be cultivated, they should be able to be compassionate with the people involved in their line of work. There being many things that can happen in the neighborhoods, flexibility is a key element. By being flexible, a person should be fast at responding to issues. They should also be able to adapt quickly to the situations and conditions found where they will be working.

In some instances, social workers do not exclusively rely on instruction to work. Such workers need to be self-directed towards doing their designated work. They are autonomous and improvise their own tasks. All these can be used as a measure of how talented and effective a social worker is. A social worker with responsibilities has the capacity of being self-directed and can improvise his/her own work, then a worker without any responsibility and relies on his/her seniors for directions.

As a social worker, it is necessary to be discrete with one's clients and at the same time, respectful work boundaries should be clearly defined so as not to cause problems to both the client and one’s self. This is because of the nature of their work they have to conduct a home visit. However, some home settings found in their routine visits may not be conducive. However, at all times, it is crucial to define your limits with the client.

In all careers, skills mismatch has for years been known to be a serious social problem. The same problem applies to social work, whereby the worker's skills either lags behind or exceeds the employers’ expectations. This has wholly led to poor service delivery to the community, Hull argues that the most extensive and unequivocal idea about literacy in relation to work is simply that workers do not possess the necessary literacy skills needed in current and future jobs.