Why Employability A View from the Chalkface

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Why Employability?A View from the Chalk-face

• Val Butcher
• Senior Visiting Fellow, Centre for Employability,
  UCLAN
• Consultant, Higher Education Academy

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Why Employability? Familiar resistances

• Why should we do it? Recognition and promotion
  are all for research
• Why should we do it? Who provides our income?
• Funding councils (HEFCE) Implicitly for the
  benefit of the
• country BUT the main funding determinant is
  student numbers, not how well we equip workforce
  for UK Plc
• Students dont want it nobody applied for my
  work experience module
• Research charities/councils Influence mainly in
  postgraduate teaching
• Employers provide little income and so have no
  levers

3
Why Employability? Familiar resistances

• Its just a political game it will pass
• I dont have enough time
• The students arent interested
• Graduates in my discipline are trained for a job
  they have no problems with employability
• I dont know how to do it

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Rising to the Challenge

• Be clear about exactly what you mean by
  employability
• Be clear what you mean by skills
• Tailor your approach to employers
• Focus on discipline -specific examples (Subject
  Centres, Sector Skills Councils)
• Audit what is already happening
• Identify Champions

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Chalk-face ChallengeWhat do you mean by
Employability?

• Employability is about ensuring graduates obtain
  jobs (and that success in this is measurable to
  some extent through first destination surveys)
• Employability is about helping to prepare
  students for employment (and that this might be
  done through a range of processes including
  traditional careers guidance and curriculum
  development)
• Employability is predominantly about gaining work
  experience (formal and informal, structured or
  not)
• Employability means the same thing as vocational
• Employability is about equipping students with a
  defined range of skills
• David Pierce Careers Service over-view on
  Strategies for Employability, LTSN Generic Centre
  2002

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What employability outcomes do you wish to
develop?

• Students are able to understand their personal
  decision making style
• Employers get applicants with the right skills at
  the right time
• Graduates able to cope regardless of the
  prevailing employment market
• Students understand the benefits of working for
  small companies
• Students know what they want to do after
  graduation
• Students are able to make and use contacts
  effectively
• Students are able to articulate and evidence
  their skills and knowledge
• Students are able to research the employment
  market
• Students understand what the study of their
  discipline has equipped them to know and to do

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Chalk face Challenge

• Be clear about what you mean by skills
• Personal Skills
• Graduate Skills
• Transferable Skills
• Enterprise Skills
• Business Skills
• Core Skills
• Key Skills/key skills
• Common Skills
• Work-related Skills
• Employability Skills
• Sector Skills

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And where are they developed

• Some skills occur naturally in the subject
• Some skills can be integrated into the curriculum
• Some skills can be offered through specially
  designed skills modules
• Some skills can only be learnt in the work-place

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The USEM Model
S
Skills including key skills
E
Personal qualities, including self-theories and
self-efficacy
Employability
Subject under-standing
Meta-cognition
M
U
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Tailor your approach to employers

• Whats in it for them?
• What is the best way to make use of their
  perspective and expertise?
• Why my department?

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Working Together Shared Challenges

• Skills shortages and skills gaps
• Changing nature of Labour Market
• Widening Participation
• Changing role of FE and HE

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HEIs and Employers Forms of Partnership

• For campus based students
• Work placements
• Work Shadowing
• Mentoring
• Academic projects in workplace
• Simulations and case-studies

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HEIs and Employers Forms of Partnership

• For work-place learners
• Employer involvement in developing and delivering
  curriculum
• Employer involvement in assessment
• Clear route-ways for progression
• Academic awareness of work-place pressures

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HEIs and Employers Planning for Partnership

• Learn each others language
• Understand each others pressures and time-scales
• Respect each others financial constraints
• Take risks together

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Audit

• An Audit is a good way to initiate
  discussion and development on an issue. It
  enables you to make clear the range of activities
  which may contribute to the issue and the process
  can reassure colleagues that quite a lot of work
  may already be developed in the area.
• The process can also recognise departmental
  autonomy, within an institutional frame-work, and
  can
• Encourage development of a departmental, School
  or Faculty strategic plan to clarify how
  employability can be developed in relation to
  their own disciplines.
• Identify how far and in what area each
  department, School or Faculty would wish to
  develop
• Give recognition to, and disseminate, existing
  work.

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Audit

• However an Audit also serves broader purposes,
  namely
• Raising awareness by staff of practice in general
  and the institutions plans in particular.
• The engagement of a wider constituency within the
  academic community.
• Providing a means for dialogue and development
  within and between departments, Schools and
  Faculties

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Audit

• The product can be enlightening, and remove much
  of the mystique from employability
• The process can make it clear that, within an
  overall framework, individual needs will be
  recognised in the institutional strategy for
  employability in the academic curriculum .

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Identify Champions

• We were totally naïve in thinking that because
  senior management signed the contract they were
  fully behind the cultural change.you have to get
  past the signature
• Without this, successful operations will remain
  marginalised, occurring only in pockets scattered
  around the institution. There needs to be either
  a critical mass of senior support or an
  individual senior champion" who has great
  influence and credibility
• How? Identify appropriate levers Money status
  meeting objectives employer engagement.

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Make a start today!

• Be clear about exactly what you mean by
  employability
• Be clear what you mean by skills
• Tailor your approach to employers
• Focus on discipline -specific examples (Subject
  Centres, Sector Skills Councils)
• Audit what is already happening
• Identify Champions
• The first 4 of these approaches can start NOW -
  don't wait until you get back to your
  over-flowing desk!

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Make a start today!

• We have already begun on this process by hearing
  from Rebecca Fielding on what graduate recruiters
  are really looking for and from several
  successful HE initiatives, including our hosts, E
  -Evolve.
• Peter Forbes, next, will be looking at discipline
  specific attributes and how to engage with the
  culture of companies
• David Bagley, tomorrow will be sharing the
  research into the varying definitions of
  employability which have been identified his
  CETL Professor Tony Watts will consider the
  relationship of employability to Career
  Development Learning

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Useful References

• Employability Frameworks and definitions
• CETH (Centre for employability through the
  humanities) UCLAN http//www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/clas
  s/cfe/ceth/research.htm
• Higher Education Academy http//www.heacademy.ac.
  uk/resources/publications/learningandemployability
  
• BMAF Subject Centre
• http//www.business.heacademy.ac.uk/resources
  /landt/employ/
• Sheffield Hallam CETL
• http//extra.shu.ac.uk/cetl/e3ihome.html
• University of Glasgow
• http//www.gla.ac.uk/employability/staff/staf
  f_index.htm
• Centre for Career Management Skills , University
  of Reading
• http//www.reading.ac.uk/ccms/index.php
• AGCAS Employability tool-kit http//www.agcas.org.
  uk/closed_site/dynamic/committee/furinfo/employabi
  lity/index.htm

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Useful References

• Skills/ Discipline-specific contacts
• Student Employability Profiles
• Employers version, CIHE http//www.cihe-uk.com/pub
  lications.php
• Individual Subject Centre websites can be
  accessed via http//www.heacademy.ac.uk/ gt Home
  page Subject Network
• Working with Employers
• Context Case materials http//www.geog.leeds.ac.uk
  /courses/other/casestudies/
• Bioscience Subject Centre ftp//www.bioscience.hea
  cademy.ac.uk/employability/employengage.pdf

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Useful References

• Audits
• Bioscience Subject Centre http//www.bioscience.he
  academy.ac.uk/resources/Audit.htm
• University of Glasgow, Debra McFarlane Dick
  http//www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/documents/event
  s/20050621/100305_Workshop1_Audit_pptPDF.pdf
• Identifying and developing champions
• Mastering Change learning the lessons of the
  Enterprise in Higher Education initiative Peter
  Hawkins and Jonathan Winter ( DfES 1997)