Employer Engagement
The Commonwealth Club posed the setting for an excellent conference on Employer Engagement, bringing together a range of delegates. Further and Higher Education (FE/HE) institutions were represented at the conference with a much greater bias towards HE, which some may argue requires the most development in managing and delivering employer engagement activities. The venue, located on Northumberland Avenue in London was excellent albeit a slight shortage of sockets for us JISC people. No live blogging or tweeting for me 
With regards to this conference employer engagement in itself covered a multitude of activities including: collaborative research, curriculum design and delivery, workforce development, consultancy etc. It’s worth pointing out that none of these activities are new to Universities/Colleges, a point presented by Madeleine Atkins in an inspiring historical journey. Madeleine highlighted the inception of Coventry University as a school of design in 1843 which was based around a specific industry (manufacturing) need.
The day itself started with a fresh outlook highlighting that although the country itself is in economic turmoil the environment to stimulate partnerships between employers and UK FE/HE has never been better. Employers require the service of training providers to up-skill their workforce in order to build capacity and save costs. Institutions/Colleges have the expertise to deliver this training in a professional, timely and tailored manner. It’s not just about the income generation either; institutions/colleges gain valuable industry experience which can be used in other contexts while employers are introduced to the forefront of innovative research and expertise increasing their chance of survival/sustainability.
Building upon earlier comments above, this isn’t a new area and there are already many examples of clear engagement including the involvement of employers on governing bodies, steering groups etc. and vice versa. The role of this activity in advancing institutions’ business development opportunities was also raised. This isn’t to say each and every institution must start engaging with employers to generate income, rather institutions should analyse the area in line with their strategic values and make an informed decision as to how they might best engage with the agenda.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that HE probably requires the most development in terms of professionalising employer engagement, however it was refreshing to hear from Derek Longhurst (FDF) that HE actually contributes to a large proportion of taught foundation degrees (almost 50/50 part-time, approx 33% full-time). Colin Monk spoke about an initiative at the University of Brighton called ProfitNet. ProfitNet brings together like-minded businesses in a forum where they can share best practice to improve productivity, profitability, skills etc. which was evidenced by a survey carried out with their members.
David Sweeney (Director: Research, Innovation and Skills at HEFCE) was very optimistic about the shape of HE and highlighted the progress made to date but also noted challenges that still remained, most notably:
- a lack of information about who to contact within the university
- university offer was not appropriate for skills need of the business
- lack of information about what universities offer
- lack of academics’ time to fulfil their HEI roles
- bureaucracy of university administrators
- insufficient rewards resulting from interaction
- unwillingness of the external organisation to meet the full cost of interaction
Further information on some of the challenges outlined above can be found in the CBI Education and Skills Survey 2009 (section 9, p47).
These were further evidenced in the presentation given by Graham Henderson (VC & Chief Executive - Teesside University). In order to address those priorities Teesside University are:
- starting to behave like a business
- developing a more flexible and responsive approach i.e. central coordination, senior managers within each school, account managers within each school and the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool
- placing the regional economy at the heart of everything they do
For more on the Teesside approach - espacially with reagrd to CRM - watch this space!
People may be interested to know that JISC and its services can help in a number of areas. The JISC approach encourages institutions to develop integrated external engagement strategies, whether in employer engagement, knowledge exchange or public engagement, so that information about interactions can be managed, reported and reviewed across the institution, leading to less duplication, more efficiency and opportunities for cross-selling. Notably, a recent toolkit, the CRM Self-analysis Framework, was created, put together by the University of Nottingham following the CRM study, which helps institutions work through their approach to CRM. You may also find the change management infoKit from JISC infoNet beneficial to your work, especially the section on culture.
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