Professional and vocational schools have always maintained a close relationship with key employers and professional bodies, as manifested in subject benchmarks, student placements, and other forms of engagement. There is now, however, a general demand for curriculum offerings to evolve in dialogue with graduate employers, to ensure they remain relevant to the goals of career-oriented students and demonstrate the benefits of further and higher education in economic terms. 

Different types of employer-facing provision and employer engagement include

• short-course provision with employers as stakeholders or even partners in course design
• tailored CPD and training (can be modular or fully bespoke)
• work placements (one-off)
• work-based learning (ongoing for duration of programme)
• school or department level contacts with professional bodies, for example to map internal quality processes with benchmarks and professional frameworks
• direct contracts with professional bodies e.g. the NHS, ACAS 
• embedding specific or generic employability attributes into the curriculum

Approaches to engaging employers are described on the stakeholder engagement pages, while some of the interventions that can result from employer engagement, for the benefit of students, are described on the employability pages.

Higher Education institutions have always worked in partnership with professional bodies, and increasingly also work alongside graduate employers and regional bodies representing business and community interests. However, the dialogue is sometimes challenged by difficulties of terminology, and tensions between the demands of workforce development and traditional conceptions of the HE curriculum. The curriculum development process therefore needs to be made more accessible to employers and professional bodies, for example in terms of how it is described, how topics are introduced to (and dropped from) the curriculum, the speed and responsiveness of development, and early availability of course documentation. Where professional bodies are closely involved in curriculum development, they too would like to see course related information rationalised. Professionals/employers would like opportunities to feed back to curriculum teams both current issues in their professional practice (changing requirements etc) and issues arising from their interactions with students e.g. on placements and in job interviews.

Professionals have a stake in keeping curricula relevant and responsive because today's students are tomorrow's colleagues.

Employers are sometimes more focused on A level points and institutional reputation than the content of students' portfolios, when it comes to selecting for recruitment. Understanding qualitative learning outcomes takes time and skill, so work on mapping competences and showcasing them via e-portfolios are also relevant here.

There are strong links between this aspect of the CDD programme and the new JISC programme on Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development.

Resources

HELPP video evidence from learners, staff and placement employers on a foundation degree programme

Engaging employers and professional bodies in curriculum design - an interview with Prof Mark Stubbs from the SRC project

Manchester Metropolitan University - Professional Development Day (prodevday) for the creative digital sector

TSPARC stakeholder engagement model

JISC Business and Community Engagement activities

JISC Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development programme

Hefce Workforce Development programme

Quotes from project baselining activities (not attributed)

'employers expect a very quick response to their requests for training, with swift validation of programmes and courses, e.g. a turnaround of 4-5 weeks, rather than 6-9 months, which is the University norm.'

[Some employers experience the HE sector as] precious, arrogant and focussed entirely on the supply side

[Our institutional strategy], rather than adopting a traditional posture of an academic immersed in a subject discipline, requires them to actively cultivate professional relationships with employers and professional bodies, building their networks for and with students.

Academic language used throughout the curriculum design and programme approval process can limit the effectiveness of employer engagement in this process. This is thought to be especially important since the scoping of the employment ‘requirements’ of a graduate is frequently the first stage in the design process.

Increased connection with professional bodies and accreditation stimulates thinking around teaching practice

Sometimes as academics, we are just slightly one step remote from that because we are not involved in the day-to-day developments - it’s a valuable contribution that clinical colleagues, or work based colleagues can make

Resources tagged 'employer engagement'