Employability

Employability can be defined as “doing value creating work, getting paid for it and learning at the same time, enhancing the ability to get work in the future”

Employability is a management philosophy, developed Sumantra Goshal in 1997, which recognises that employment and market performance stem from the initiative, creativity and competencies of all employees, and not just from the wisdom of senior management.

For employers, it involves creating a working environment that can provide opportunities for personal and professional growth, within a management environment where it is understood that talented, growing people mean talented, growing organisations.

For many employees, the new contract would involve movement towards a greater commitment to continuous learning and development, and towards an acceptance that, in a climate of constant change and uncertainty, the will to develop is the only hedge against a changing job market.

There are several options for and many aspects of employability:

Traditional employment does not include employability. Review of the literature regarding traditional employment and employability suggests that employability is related to work and the ability to be employed, such as:

Lee Harvey defines employability as the ability of a graduate to get a satisfying job, stating that job acquisition should not be prioritized over preparedness for employment to avoid pseudo measure of individual employability. Lee argues that employability is not a set of skills but a range of experiences and attributes developed through higher-level learning, thus employability is not a “product‘ but a process of learning.

Employability continues to develop because the graduate, once employed, does not stop learning (i.e. continuous learning). Thus employability by this definition is about learning, not least learning how to learn, and it is about empowering learners as critical reflective citizens definition is important for it emphasizes employability of graduates, which is similar to our context, hence, able to provide insight about how to measure graduates‘ employability and what are the differences between graduates and experienced individuals in labor market.

Berntson (2008) argues that employability refers to an individual‘s perception of his or her possibilities of getting new, equal, or better employment. Berntson‘s study differentiates employability into two main categories – actual employability (objective employability) and perceived employability (subjective employability).

Several employability definitions have been developed based on, or including input from business and industry. In the United States, an Employability Skills Framework was developed through a collaboration of employers, educators, human resources associations, and labour market associations. This framework states, “Employability skills are general skills that are necessary for success in the labor market at all employment levels and in all sectors”. After conducting research with employers across Canada, the Conference Board of Canada released Employability Skills 2000+, which defines employability as “the skills you need to enter, stay in, and progress in the world of work”. Saunders & Zuzel (2010) found that employers valued personal qualities such as dependability and enthusiasm over subject knowledge and ability to negotiate.

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Wikipedia