Employer development of professional capabilities among early career workers and implications for the design of work-based learning

Abstract

Professional capabilities, particularly enterprise behaviours, are increasingly sought after in the labour market, enabling new workers to perform effectively in complex and diverse contexts. Capability deficits among new graduates have prompted the growth of work-based learning (e.g., internships) in tertiary programs to better prepare students for transition to work. There is, however, a lack of understanding of how students learn at work, leading to this investigation of employer approaches to capability development among early career workers, including tertiary graduates and youth workers. Survey data were gathered from 306 business owners, managers, and human resource practitioners from diverse organisational settings. Respondents were largely committed to developing professional capabilities among new workers, although some were prioritised over others. Six broad approaches to capability development were identified, with differences observed by sector and organisational size. Findings reinforce the importance of socio-cultural factors, including barriers, in shaping how early career workers learn at work. Findings advance our understanding of ways to develop professional capabilities among early career workers and can inform work-based learning design to better prepare students for future employment. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

Author Keywords

Capabilities work-based learning work-integrated learning Future work Industry-education collaboration

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia

Funding & Acknowledgements

European Commission, EC

First, participants provided detail on demographic and work setting characteristics, and the types of ECWs engaged in their organisation. ECWs were classified as (i) tertiary students on internships/placements, (ii) HE graduates, (iii) VET graduates, (iv) school leavers, (v) trades, apprenticeships, or those on government schemes (disabled/return-to-work), or (vi) other, with a text field for explanation. To address RQ1, participants rated their organisation's commitment to developing each of the 14 enterprise capabilities using five-point Likert scales (‘not at all’ to ‘extremely’). For RQ2, respondents were asked to describe ways that their organisation develops each of the 14 capabilities in ECWs. The first ten capabilities were from Jackson et al.’s (2020a) framework of industry-relevant capabilities (see Table 1), developed in collaboration with industry and previously used to explore tertiary students' capabilities (for example, Jackson & Chapman, 2012). The following three capabilities in Table 1 related to value creation and ideation, derived from the intermediate proficiency level in the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (Bacigalupo et al., 2016). This framework was chosen given its introduction by the European Commission to support the measurement and development of enterprise capabilities, and its use in similar studies exploring entrepreneurial competence among ECWs (for example, Smith et al., 2020). The fourteenth capability was informed by Bridgstock's (2013) work on social networks. Respondents were given full details of the constituent behaviours yet rated only on overarching capabilities. The survey was reviewed by colleagues prior to circulation.This work was supported by Spacecubed.

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Employer development of professional capabilities among early career workers and implications for the design of work-based learning

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