Initiations of Employer Engagement in Training Delivery of TVET Programmes

Engagement of employers in the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system is needed not only to increase the training capacity but to ensure the TVET is demand-driven, quality oriented, future focused and provides the economy with the skilled workers it needs. Employer engagement in TVET system covers a spectrum of cooperation and involves small participation to build the trust required to develop more robust long-term engagement strategies. Developing engagements with employer and employer’s associations at all levels of the training programmes life cycle facilitate the development of workable solutions for training-to-work transitions. The employer has a crucial role to play in the delivery of training programmes. Engagement of employer is an essential component of overall training programmes and leads to developing responsive labour market skill needs, supporting priority economic sectors, training design and development, training delivery and post training support to develop ongoing dialogue with employer and employer associations. The need to increase the engagement of employers in TVET programmes has been known for many years in the country, however, employer engagement in training delivery of TVET programme is under-explored in Nepal. This article addresses the existing situation, explores issues, and share some practicable initiations of employer engagement in the TVET programme.

The Street-Level Organisation in-between Employer Needs and Client Needs: Creaming Users by Motivation in the Norwegian Employment and Welfare Service (NAV)

Employer engagement is increasingly emphasised in the context of efforts to bring more disadvantaged people into work. A new approach in the Norwegian Employment and Welfare Service (NAV) combines demand-side and supply-side measures in a ‘combined workplace-oriented approach’. Through qualitative interviews with frontline staff – including job coaches following the Supported Employment (SE) method – the paper examines the intermediary role of the street-level organisation (SLO) through the targeted use of SE methods directed at young users and employers. The findings suggest that young users are ‘creamed by motivation’ into the SE programme, which can be explained by the importance the SLO places: on maintaining inter-organisational relationships with employers, on job coaches’ performance goals and the need to uphold an organisational structure in the SLO that seemingly works efficient to shift caseloads of young unemployed into work. Hence, creaming is not specific to outsourcing but can also occur when insourcing employer engagement services into a public SLO. Although relational work directed at both employers and young clients is seen as the benefit of a combined workplace-oriented approach, it appears a rather flimsy foundation for successful ALMPs unless supported by more structural demand-side measures.

Co-creating with BAME students in legal education

This article explores the challenges of addressing inequitable outcomes and experiences for BAME Law students. It considers the specific challenges BAME students face in entering a profession that is highly competitive, and which has traditionally lacked diversity. It details the approach that The University of Law, as a specialist legal educational institution, has taken to work and co-create with its student body to reduce these inequitable outcomes and experiences, as well as to improve a wider sense of belonging between students, their educational institution and the legal sector. It takes, as a case study, The University of Law's BAME Student Advocate scheme, which was established in the spring of 2020, and spotlights a few key projects delivered by the BAME Advocates: an employer engagement project, a Ramadan project and a project on raising awareness of institutional racism through the Stephen Lawrence case.

Workplace Inclusion Competence and Employer Engagement

Existing active labor market policy (ALMP) measures have been unsuccessful in establishing long- term employment for vulnerable groups.This paper contributes to further development of the role of the employer engagement perspective in ALMP. We introduce the term workplace inclusion competence and explore its association to two distinct work-organizational categories: participa tion- and control-oriented management. We operationalize workplace inclusion competence as inclusion opportunity and inclusion capability. We argue that such competence is dynamic and processual, and find that organizational management-orientation, as well as work pace, employees’ developmental opportunities, financial situation and OSH, have an impact on workplace inclusion competence. Survey data among a sample of managers is analyzed regarding workplaces’ capabilities and opportunities in work inclusion processes. We present two sets of indexes to measure organizational management-orientation and inclusion skills competence. As such, we contribute to the research field by providing new and more specific concepts with adherent question indexes, and by connecting them to a work-organizational perspective.

Scale Development to Measure Employer Engagement

Employer engagement, in existing literature, mostly refers to the engagement of the educational institutions in the corporate world; to benchmark their curricula and syllabi in-line with the employers' needs. This study has focused on the same construct with different relation; typically in the context of work-based learning providers and organizational practices. Although there has been theoretical discussions and calls to develop comprehensive measures for employer engagement, however, no contemporary measure for employer engagement exist to the context this study was carried out. The scope of this study covers the development of a new scale based on the guidelines to measure employer engagement specifically to the context of work based practices. The scale constitutes of 19 items that address, employer engagement based on 3 sub-dimensions. The scale was developed and validated through six phases beginning with the determination of valid dimensions / construct followed by generation of pool of items, assessing the content adequacy of the items and items refinement through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Reliability and validity of the scale are also tested.

Employer Engagement and Active Labour Market Policies. Evidence from a Norwegian Multi-Method Study

Using Work Training in Norway as a case, this article provides insight into motivation and structural factors that impact employer engagement with active labour market policies (ALMP) targeting young people. Drawing on mixed-methods data, we find a substantial proportion of Norwegian employers engage in Work Training. Both social responsibility and the economic interests of the company influence employers’ motivation for committing to Work Training. The findings reveal that the structural factors of business size and sector are crucial determinants of employer behaviour when it comes to hiring Work Training candidates. Although improved outreach activities by local job centres may be important, the article argues that efforts towards opening up sectors closed by sector-specific regulations on hiring, and increased awareness of structural constraints, are similarly important.

Higher Education and Employability Skills: Barriers and Facilitators of Employer Engagement at Local Level

This research examines the barriers and facilitators to employers’ engagement with higher education institutions. The data were collected through interviews with a set of employers (n = 19) in the Northern region of Portugal, V.N.de Famalicão, in 2019. We begin by exploring employers’ engagement activities as a potential solution to address local-level skill problems. Empirical evidence suggests that the engagement activities are mostly passive as firms use higher education largely as a recruitment channel. The differences in organizational goals and culture are the most cited barriers to the lack of more active engagement. Some efforts have recently been made to strengthen the ties between higher education and employers, notably through a local multi-stakeholder partnership as a potential broker. However, it will take time for this to bear fruit and contribute to reducing skill gaps and shortages. The data show that despite employers’ apparent willingness, more effort must be made to encourage active engagement.