Delivering Employability programmes

Employability programmes are an opportunity to support individuals to learn new skills, build confidence, higher aspirations, and gain experiences and insights to help them on their career journey.

Employability programme providers can use the common language and approach of the Skills Builder Universal Framework to develop essential employability skills through their programmes.

Using the Skills Builder approach to develop your employability programme(s)

Building essential skills is particularly effective if learners have the opportunity to relate the skills to the world of work, to understand the value of the skills in employment, and how the skills can lead to positive employment outcomes. Ideally, they could reflect on and practise their skills in work-related contexts, and employability programmes can provide that context.

The most effective and impactful ways our organisation partners have been using the Universal Framework to embed essential skill development into their employability programmes include:

Facilitator-led approach

• Identifying the skills you want participants to develop (it may be that there are natural opportunities to apply certain skills already in the programme, and it's a case of making this explicit, or you may want to create new opportunities to develop skills).
  
  

• Telling participants the skill(s) and skill step(s) they are going to be focusing on (for example, by including a skill step in the programme objectives/outcomes, alongside, for example, knowledge-based objectives). Ideally this would be based on formative assessment (although this may not be possible with new participants).
   

• Making the visual connection for participants to other contexts in which the skills have occurred, using the skill icons.
  
  

• Explaining what 'good' looks like for those focus areas, and checking understanding (either by signposting to the relevant Universal Framework page, or (if delivered by a facilitator) explained by facilitators using the Framework's Building Blocks).
  
  

• Making explicit the skill steps they are practising in activities, with 'stretch' opportunities (for example, by introducing and explaining a higher skill step) and scaffolding (for example, by introducing the expanded framework to participants) both available.
  
  

• Incorporating space for participants to reflect on and articulate their understanding of the skill(s) in question, and how they've applied their skills in a particular activities. Ideally you would use the reflection questions on the Universal Framework to support accurate reflections.
  
  

• Providing feedback and supporting participants to identify strengths and areas for development against the Universal Framework.
  
  

• Measuring progress to track whether your actions are having a positive impact.

Learner-led approach

• Supporting learners to identify their strengths and areas for development against the Universal Framework.
  
  

• Supporting learners to set a skill-based target to develop through the programme.
  
  

• Supporting learners to understand what 'good' looks like for their focus area (either by signposting to the relevant Universal Framework page, or (if delivered by a facilitator) explained by facilitators using the Framework's Building Blocks).
  
  

• Supporting learners to identify and/or create opportunities to develop their skills through the programme.
  
  

• Supporting learners to reflect on, articulate and track their skill development through the programme.

Achieving an impact level for your employability programme(s)

It is possible to achieve impact level 4 for an employability programme. Below you will find actions to help you work towards achieving the full range of impact levels for the facilitator-led approach noted above. To achieve an impact level for the learner-led approach, where a programme facilitator acts as more of a mentor, see here.

You can read more about the impact levels and the directory here.