ENU Employability Strategy

Edinburgh Napier’s commitment to our students and graduates’ employability development remains a key priority for our university and continues to be underpinned by the excellent work of our academic and professional services staff. Our employability strategy is centred around four key strategic pillars;

Strategic Directions.

SD1 - Enhancing Employability Culture.

Recognising that we are all responsible for delivery of effective employability best practice through development of School and Professional Service processes and action plans, to enhance our existing offer. We will work to identify the employability needs of a diverse student population and ensure all Edinburgh Napier students access employability interventions throughout their time at the university.​

SD2 - Embedding Employability.

Embedding employability in all programmes to enhance student professional development within the curriculum in an inclusive, consistent, and impactful way, and in response to the skills needs of employers. This will ensure tailored employability delivery as an integral part of all students’ education and support employment trajectories of all students and graduates.​

SD3 - Developing Experience.

Increase student access to work based and work-related learning within the curriculum (and extracurricular) to ensure a greater number of students are ‘Career Ready’ by engaging with a greater number of appropriate work experience opportunities which develop skills in a range of different internships, including (but not limited to) additional short to long term work placements, live projects, research, volunteering, and entrepreneurial development practice.​

SD4 - Ensuring Legacy.

Developing a lasting framework for early years graduates to stay connected to Edinburgh Napier and continue their professional development through a range of employability interactions up to 24 months after graduation. Ensuring continued access to professional development support, networking events and live job roles which are accessible and inclusive for Edinburgh Napier students from all backgrounds.​

 

Purpose.

The strategy itself has been created to establish a clear pathway of benchmarking and enhancement of all employability delivery across the institute, both curricular and non-curricular, and closely aligns to the ENroute employability strand and its associated ambitions. Utilising a wide range of source materials which evidence current HE employability best practice, government led employability agendas and external employability models and frameworks, the ENU employability strategy responds to the external factors which directly impact on how HEI’s will be measured and monitored on employability delivery over the next 5 years.

 

The Full ENU Employability Strategy 2022.pdf (napier.ac.uk)

Staff engagement.

We welcome further discussion and engagement related to the employability strategy launch and next steps. If you would like to discuss employability for your school or programme or suggest ideas and contribution for the implementation of the strategy, email us here – strategy@napier.ac.uk (TBC)

Employability Gaps Analysis Project & Employability ToolKit.

As part of the development of the employability strategy across the university, it is key that each school contributes to a review of it’s employability offer and a review is undertaken to assess the level of quality currently being offered to all students at ENU. This work is closely linked to to the ENhance employability strand and provides an opportunity to evaluate our currently delivery against a series of benchmarks. Supporting resources as follows;

Career Registration Data.

The introduction of Career Registration Data to ENU will provide information related to all students at ENU based on 3 key employability questions they will be asked at the point of each yearly registration (formerly known as matriculation) into their programme. The answers to these questions will provide a clear range of data sets that benchmark the progress of student’s employability development specifically related to each school programme and allow colleagues to specifically identify where there are potential areas of weakness in students knowledge. This will facilitate conversation about which specific interventions are required both in curricular and non-curricular provision.

Career Edge Model.

The model is a framework which enables academics, professional services staff and employers to work together and contextualise the approach to graduate employability in each programme. The CareerEDGE model also explains the concept of employability clearly to students, allowing them to take responsibility for their own employability development, recognising and celebrating their individual strengths, skills and values.

Embed full link to Career Edge information

 

Employability Skills Consultancy. 

For colleagues/programmes/schools seeking support in establishing approach to employability gaps analysis and quality review, central support for consultative process on how to develop greater employability skills support can be accessed through a range of tools and expertise via Student Futures and ENhance.

digital skills tools and employability best practice currently being piloted across the university;

 

Embed links to to Dave’s Personal & Professional Development Programme

Links to other best practice examples of ENU employability models – TBS Employability Skills Programme

Links to information about Abintegro and how this is currently utilised

 

Phase 2 : Governance Groups structure  – To be confirmed with Heads of Learning and Teaching (Early – Mid May)

Employability Strategy Implementation groups

As part of ensuring that the employability strategy and it’s four key pillars are effectively integrated into the cross-university ways of working, we are currently looking for colleagues across both the academic and professional services remit to be part of the following governance groups.

 

Student Success Group

This already established university group (which meets monthly) will be the owners of the overall employability strategy and the place where progress and updates will be ultimately governed. Employability Strategy Sponsors will be responsible for providing updates and reports to the SSG (frequency of updates TBC)

 

Heads of Learning and Teaching Board

The Heads of Learning and Teaching will form a Chair/Sponsors Board and meet ahead of each implementation group (once a trimester) to establish shared priorities and agenda items and meet after all governance meetings have been completed to discuss outcomes and actions. These outcomes and actions will form part of the report to be provided to SSG.

 

Employability Strategy Implementation Group

The proposed approach to the initial implementation is focus on the second pillar of the strategy ‘Embedding Employability’. It is felt that by starting with this substantial pillar, any discussion, actions and outcomes will naturally impact the other three pillars of the strategy. It is also based on negative impact on resource to create four separate working groups.

Within this group focus should also be on key outliers that will impact on the ability to delivery of the strategy – eg University wide employability infrastructure and resource;

                       

Frequency of working group meetings and subgroups/reporting lines

Governance Group will meet once a trimester with agreed agenda. Actions will be developed and shared in minutes and discussed at next meeting. This will be organised by the Chair/Sponsor of group.

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