A step-by-step guide to building strong and sustainable business/education partnerships for CTE, STEM, and academy leaders

Building on new theories about the meaning of employability in the twenty-first century and the power of social and cultural capital in enabling access to economic opportunities, Essays on Employer Engagement in Education considers how employer engagement is delivered and explores the employment and attainment outcomes linked to participation. Introducing international policy, research and conceptual approaches, contributors to the volume illustrate the role of employer engagement within schooling and the life courses of young people. The book considers employer engagement within economic and educational contexts and its delivery and impact from a global perspective. The work explores strategic approaches to the engagement of employers in education and concludes with a discussion of the implications for policy, practice and future research. Essays on Employer Engagement in Education will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of careers guidance, work-related learning, teacher professional development, the sociology of education, educational policy and human resource management. It will also be essential reading for policymakers and practitioners working for organisations engaging employers in education.

Active labour market policies aim to assist people not in work into work through a range of interventions including job search, training and in-work support and development. While policies and scholarship predominantly focus on jobseekers’ engagement with these initiatives, this book sheds light for the first time on the employer’s perspective.

In a world of political and economic uncertainty where stress and unhappiness are on the rise, improving employee wellbeing has never been more important. But with budgets being squeezed and the constant need to do more with less, this can seem like an insurmountable task. 50 Top Tools for Employee Wellbeing shows that interventions don't need to be expensive or time-consuming. It contains practical tools for immediately improving staff wellbeing, resulting in happier, more engaged and more productive employees. Each tool in the book includes guidance on when to use it, how to get the most out of it and - most importantly - how to measure its impact to show what's working and where efforts are best focused. Addressing all the key areas of the subject, from career development and workplace culture to physical, mental and financial wellbeing, this is a complete resource for improving your workforce's wellbeing.

"Best Practices Guidelines and Toolkit on Engaging the Private Sector in Skills Development”, jointly developed by UNDP IICPSD and Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries(SESRIC), will inspire, motivate and mobilize the private sector for its active engagement in skills training for employment. The guidelines and toolkit will help stakeholders to collaborate more closely with companies, chambers of commerce and business associations. It outlines how the private sector could contribute to the employability of individuals through providing labour market signals, improving technical and practical skills acquisition, integrating industry know-how and expertise to every step of the trainings and help link skills to placement opportunities. These will ensure that disadvantaged youth, women and other marginalized groups are ready to enter the labour force with possessing the right skills they need to thrive. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights the importance of skills and lifelong learning not only to make individuals competitive in the labour market but also to empower people. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 reminds us that inclusive, quality education is critical for human development. SDG 8 reminds us that decent work and economic growth can only be achieved through productive capacities. The relationship between skills and employability is fundamental to the success of the SDGs — from eradicating poverty to achieving gender equality to empowering women and girls. Bridging the skills mismatch for greater employability will be a huge leap forward in achieving the SDGs. This publication guarantees to guide all stakeholders in the direction of improving the existing skills and reducing the skills mismatch for greater employability of the target groups. The Guidelines and Toolkit will complement existing UNDP work on sustainable employment and inclusive growth and augments the related efforts of other international organizations.

This collection of papers aims to generate new and exciting opportunities for a holistic view of entrepreneurial research agendas, and advance the manner in which academics and researchers think about and engage with various aspects of entrepreneurial practice and development.

A non-biased, grounded, and practical approach to employee engagement For managers and business leaders who want to enhance performance, this easy-to-use guide to employee management offers real solutions for getting workers engaged and increasing productivity. It explains what employee engagement is, why it matters, what the benefits of it are, what helps and hinders it, how to measure it, how to put theory into action when trying to create it. As an added benefit, it offers plenty of advice on how managers can keep themselves engaged, even during the toughest of times.

Teaching Students About the World of Work argues that educational institutions—especially two-year and four-year public institutions serving low-income students—need to make the topic of employment a central element in their educational offerings. Indeed, the book demonstrates that a far greater emphasis on teaching students about the work world will be necessary if colleges are to give disadvantaged students a realistic chance for professional and economic success. The recommendation is a reconfiguration of postsecondary education that represents a paradigm shift in career preparation and learning. Editors Nancy Hoffman and Michael Lawrence Collins and their authors provide a rich and comprehensive view of both today’s work world and the challenges facing many young people who are determined to find a place within it. The book offers detailed accounts of how several community colleges have put employment at the center of the curriculum; provides practical insights into the twenty-first century labor market and ways to improve the choices and outcomes for low-income job seekers; and explores the daunting structural barriers to securing successful and satisfying employment. Throughout all its chapters, the book highlights increasing inequalities—in both opportunities and outcomes—within our society. In order to redress those disparities, it argues, postsecondary educators will need to offer enhanced insights and sophistication to disadvantaged young people preparing to enter and navigate the work world. An urgent but unfailingly reasonable book for our times, Teaching Students About the World of Work will be required reading for educators determined to create practical opportunities for young people in search of good employment and better lives.

An argument for reimagining skill in a way that can extend economic opportunity to workers at the bottom of the labor market. The United States has a jobs problem—not enough well-paying jobs to go around and not enough clear pathways leading to them. Skill development is critical for addressing this employment crisis, but there are many unresolved questions about who has skill, how it is attained, and whose responsibility it is to build skills over time. In this book, Nichola Lowe tells the stories of pioneering workforce intermediaries—nonprofits, unions, community colleges—that harness this ambiguity around skill to extend economic opportunity to workers at the bottom of the labor market. Skill development confers shared value to both workers and employers because it lies at the intersection of their respective interests. Connecting skill to economic inequality, Lowe calls for solutions that push employers to accept greater responsibility for skill development. She examines real-world examples of workplace intermediaries throughout the United States, exploring in detail the work of manufacturing-focused organizations in Chicago and Milwaukee, and a network of community colleges in North Carolina that coordinates training for biopharmaceutical manufacturers. As workforce intermediaries help employers reinterpret skill, they also convince them to implement inclusive work-based systems that extend family-sustaining wages and better working conditions across the entire workforce. With renewed policy emphasis on skill development, these opportunity-rich solutions can be further expanded—ensuring workers across the entire educational spectrum contribute skills that drive innovation forward and share the gains they generate for the twenty-first century workplace.

A practical guide on how to build the case for investment in the employee experience, how to achieve senior leadership buy-in, and the tools you'll need to develop a winning culture. As Richard Branson says: "Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients." Despite the popularity of this quote, whereas organisations spend big budgets chasing new leads and keeping current customers satisfied, few spend much money on the people who truly make the organisation succeed or fail: the employees. The lack of serious investment in the employee experience is a major factor in worldwide lost productivity totally over $7 trillion. The importance of this investment isn't landing with the majority of senior leaders, though. This is leading to frustration from those working in HR, Internal Comms, Employee Engagement, Employee Experience and Learning & Development, as they have suggestions and solutions for improvement, but, unlike investment in the customer experience, these aren't making it onto the agendas of senior leaders. And without their buy-in, employee-related initiatives are doomed to fail. This book will show you how to: Build the business case for investing in the employee experience; Calculate how much more productive and profitable your organisation could be if you had a more motivated workforce; Deliver a great employee experience using the free EXO Tookit. Investing in the employee experience is a win: win: win. It benefits the employees, as they have a more enjoyable and fulfilling work life. It benefits the business, as employees will be more productive and the business more profitable. It benefits the customer, as they will be better served by motivated and satisfied employees, reducing customer churn and increasing revenues. It's not: 'Can you afford to invest in the employee experience?', it's: 'Can you afford not to?'.