3 Activities to Build Workplace Skills

I often find myself thinking, “They should know this,” when my high school students send an email that isn’t professional or I see 1,000 unread messages in their inbox. One day, my students were engaging in an activity where they navigated the job market. As students were reading a job description, they were asking genuine questions, sharing advice they’d heard, and having audible aha moments. It clicked for me: We often expect adult behavior without providing adult instruction to students. If we want students to navigate the workforce with confidence, we have to start treating professional agency as part of our core curriculum.

By preparing students before they enter the workforce, start an internship, or go to college, we are giving them the tools they need for success. Activities that simulate workplace scenarios benefit students by teaching them to think critically, learn how to prioritize information, and build confidence in their ability to navigate their future industries.

3 Skill-Building Activities

1. Managing a mock inbox. Create a mock inbox for students using a Google Doc or series of task cards. Each card has an email on it. I create five mock emails that have similar time stamps, but differing issues. These can include a client complaining about a service or product, a project request from a boss, a low-priority newsletter, an urgent technical question from a colleague, and a thank-you note from a partner.

First, students need to prioritize which emails to respond to first. Then, students craft professional responses to two of the emails. Students can share their reasoning with each other.

While students work in their small groups, a “difficult” email from a client or boss pops into their mailbox. How does this throw them off or force them to reprioritize? As we know, challenging emails can be thrown at us at any point. By teaching students what to do in the moment, it gives them the skills to better respond.

A possible extension activity is to have students create a poster with their responses to one of the emails and then participate in a gallery walk. As students visit each poster response, they can leave comments, questions, or suggestions.

After, spend time as a class discussing the challenge. I have each group share an email they found particularly challenging. If students are missing important takeaways, I will point out specific lines in the task cards so students can reflect. Share tips on how to prioritize emails that all seem urgent and important. This includes deleting unnecessary emails, or prioritizing emails based on the deadline, level of emergency, or manager requests. Emails regarding future projects and long-term goals can be saved for later. You can also physically show students how to use different labels and folders in their inbox.

2. Thinking through workplace conflict scenarios. Reviewing workplace dynamics and scenarios can build muscle memory of responding in a proactive rather than reactive way while being quick, calm, and effective under pressure. In this activity, provide your students different scenarios that could arise in the workplace, and have them brainstorm how they’d respond. Here are some prompts that I put on task cards:

• The input conflict: A supervisor asks for input, and you believe a colleague’s plan will fail or cause issues. 
• The angry client: A client is upset about a technical error that wasn’t your fault. 
• A non-contributing teammate: You are on a project team, and a colleague isn’t meeting milestones.
• The mistake: You made a calculation error on a project that was already submitted to your boss. 

You can give students guiding questions such as these:

• What is your gut reaction to this scenario?
• In this scenario, what is the biggest concern right now?
• What are the objective facts of this situation?
• What is one small win you can offer?

I have students brainstorm by themselves before discussing these scenarios as a group.Learning how to respond quickly, calmly, and effectively can help students think more quickly on their feet.

3. The feedback loop. As a former English teacher and current Career Technical Education teacher, I know that students often have difficulty receiving feedback. When students receive feedback in school, it often has a grade attached to it, which can lead to negative feelings. However, feedback in the workplace is an ongoing process.

I have students work in pairs on a small task like designing a flyer. I create a mock client workshop that describes what the client wants. Students work in pairs on creating a flyer based on client demands, I give the groups 15 minutes to design the flyer before entering the feedback loop. Every 10 minutes, students must swap tasks with another group and provide feedback. I give them industry sentence stems on how to give feedback, like “I see why you used (specific tool or color). Have you considered the following (tool or color)?” Students then incorporate the feedback into their design.

The purpose is to de-stigmatize feedback and show how it can be used as a professional tool. It also allows students to practice giving feedback and how to receive feedback they might not necessarily agree with.

By simulating workplace dynamics, we are doing more than just teaching “soft skills.” We begin to build a bridge between classroom and career. Whether a student is heading for a part-time job, a corporate internship, or college, these activities transform help students develop the skills they need to succeed.