A Whole-Curriculum Approach to Developing Students' Employability Skills: A Huddersfield Business School Case Study

The Graduate Outcomes survey is the new kid on the block, highlighting the impact of universities on employment outcomes. It is difficult to find a Business School that isn't currently dedicating time and resources to examining the skills they expect students to develop and, more importantly, how to make it happen.

This case study showcases how Huddersfield Business School (HBS) is adopting a whole-curriculum approach to ensure that employability skills are fully designed into the curriculum for every course, and that skills are visible within everything we do. Our goal is that every student is clear about what skills they have developed, have the evidence to demonstrate their competence, and is adept at communicating their skills to future employers.

Developing skills for industry is nothing new. Historically, many business school awards were specifically designed to support local industry. Here at HBS, for instance, back in the 1980s, we offered awards in Textile Marketing and Engineering Marketing, aligning them with our local industry base. Similarly, institutions like HBS have incorporated "sandwich placements" into their programmes for over 30 years, giving students a year-long immersive industry experience during their third year of study.

However, the new metrics and government priority on graduate outcomes have sharpened our focus. They have encouraged us to be more precise about the skills we want to develop and to seriously consider how to address them.

In recent years, HBS developed a core set of modules called 'ASPIRE' that spans the three years of an undergraduate degree. These modules prioritise skills building and employability within the heart of our programmes. While it has taken some time for the modules to fully integrate, they now form a coherent part of the curriculum, working hand-in-hand with other subject-based specialisms and they are vital for our future development. We also introduced 'Development Weeks', which provide a break from the usual studying routine. These weeks allow students to gain valuable hands-on experiences in the real world, boosting their exposure to the business realm and enhancing their overall skill set. However, skills development cannot be relegated to a ‘skills-based module’. They must permeate the full curriculum.

Inspired by the inaugural School employability workshop, we recognised that we need to be more co-ordinated and systematic in our endeavours, leading to the birth of a strategic school-wide employability skills project. By bringing together both academic teams and professional services from the School and the central University, we have developed a project whose goal is to ensure that every course has a clear employability skills map that is transparent to both staff and students. We want employability skills to be upfront and badged, empowering students to create their own narratives and allowing them to showcase their growth and development throughout their journey with us.

In this blog article, we explore the 5 essential steps it took to successfully deliver a whole-curriculum approach to employability.

1. Everyone has to be invested

When I (Adam) joined Huddersfield Business School in August 2022, the passion for embedding employability across the curriculum was evident from the outset. The enthusiasm at all levels of the organisation, and across the staff body was clear. This passion is indicated by the fact that the Senior Leadership Team are designing a bespoke employability skills framework. There is also a clear importance placed on employability and embedding the necessary skills across all aspects of the curriculum and joining the dots between the academic and professional services offerings at HBS.

A whole-curriculum approach requires multiple stakeholders for it to be successful. Senior leaders met with course tutors and academics to begin a skills mapping exercise, and professional services staff linked to careers and employability from across the university met to see what resources were already available and what needed creating.

Once the various staff had completed their initial research and spoken with colleagues, it was clear that there was a real appetite for a joined-up approach to this initiative. The ideas were brought to the School Employability and Enterprise Group, bringing the discussion to a more global ‘university-wide’ audience, including the HBS School Manager and staff from outside HBS, such as the Enterprise Team. Everyone was united in their support.

Such collegiality doesn’t happen by accident, it’s purposeful and organised. It’s embraced at all levels of the organisation and driven by a cross-school approach. But for the efforts to bear fruit, the message needs to be clear, accessible for all, and digestible for the student population, and the ideas need to be driven in unanimity by academic staff and professional services.

2. Evidence-based curriculum development

To deliver a ‘whole curriculum’ approach it’s important to maintain a curriculum that is fit for purpose and provides graduates with the skills they require. A game-changer for us has been the high-quality data provided by the labour market software, Lightcast.  

Lightcast is the global leader in labour market analytics, providing data on occupations, skills-in-demand, and career pathways. Led by the Academic Lead for Employability we have generated a report for each course, highlighting the types of jobs available in the market, their location and salary rates.  

Lightcast also provides data on the specific and general skills employers are looking for. This real-time data has significantly improved our course teams’ understanding of the job market, growth potential, and skills-in-demand in the local, regional, and national labour markets. 

But this isn’t a one-stop-shop approach; course teams have had to analyse the Lightcast data, alongside GO data and their industry knowledge to interpret the results before applying them to curriculum development. And of course, the labour market is constantly changing so using the Lightcast data is now embedded in the ongoing process of continuous curriculum development.

3. Make skills accessible and explicit

There is no shortage of guidance on skills: many organisations provide a perspective of what students should achieve through a business degree including the QAA benchmark statements, AACSB standards, and the University’s own Huddersfield Graduate Attributes Framework to name just a few. In fact, the problem was that there were too many.  

We came to the conclusion that we needed a bespoke framework specific to our School that we could own and structure in a way which was helpful to inform our School curriculum. This was important for both staff and students.

For staff, we needed an overall map of the curriculum to “design-in” where we will help develop employability skills, know which modules will emphasise particular skills and prevent unhelpful repetition.  

For students, it’s important that they understand what skills they are developing. After all, there is no point in having embedded skills if they are invisible to students themselves. The HBS Employability Skills framework provides us with a map for our journey and allows us to brand skills more explicitly, wherever they arise in the student journey, whether it is in lectures, seminar activities, Development Weeks, events or conferences. Moreover, we have used the skills framework to inform a new approach to designing ‘authentic assessments’.

4. Be consistent, persistent and insistent

The best design in the world is only as good as its implementation.

To undertake the project effectively requires action from every member of the School’s teaching staff. It has involved invoking the full array of teaching and learning governance, ranging from a mandate from the Strategic Leadership Team, approval by the School Teaching and Learning Committee, as well as using the range of course team management structures. 

We have operated workshops and training sessions, much of which have been led by the School leadership. All teams have been required to undertake this process, including both academic and professional services.

5. Signpost students to services

Once the internal mapping process is complete, the next stage is to create student-facing badges. This branding will be used across HBS, by both academic teams and professional services staff. 

After clear branding is created, an online dashboard will go live, highlighting where students can seek expert, professional advice on their skills development. This includes signposting students to services already available to them, but by clearly defining the benefits to their future employability, it breaks down the barrier of ‘who do I speak to for help with….?’. The support services available include the Learning, Innovation and Development Centre, Employability and Placement Team, Computing and Library Services, Careers and Employability Service, Enterprise Team, and the Student Union.

There’s such a plethora of support available to students it can sometimes be overwhelming to know which service to seek support from, and for what. Therefore, defining which team can support students with which employability skills, improves the accessibility of the services and makes interactions more effective and impactful.As well as signposting students to the wider support services that already exist, it’s important to involve the academic course leaders and module leaders in highlighting skills throughout the curriculum. By mapping employability skills across the curriculum, module leaders can take ownership to embed the development of those skills in lectures, workshops and tasks.

Using consistent branding demonstrates to students how the curriculum is supporting their professional and personal development. Although these skills are already there, by introducing ‘badges’, it makes the implicit, explicit. It clearly highlights the skills required for the workplace and indicates graduate level skills, and makes it easier for students to evidence them in applications and in future employment.

The road ahead

How successful have we been? Only time will tell. It is clear that the logical and structured approach indicates to staff that we take employability skills deadly seriously and most colleagues recognise this. But, as with all change, it takes time and we still have staff who consider employability skills to be the responsibility of our professional careers services rather than forming a core part of the degree. However, the culture is shifting. We have further work to undertake to incorporate the skills more systematically into our assessments and into the branding of individual tasks, but these matters are within our sights.

From my perspective as Academic Lead to Employability and GO (Janna), it is important that employability is not considered as an afterthought or an ‘add on’ but is central to curriculum, academic and support service decision making. Otherwise, why are we doing what we are doing?

We know GO results will fluctuate from cohort to cohort, so rather than having a reactive strategy, HBS wanted to adopt a proactive approach that over time will influence our GO results and, most importantly, provide better opportunities for our graduates to achieve the personal and professional potential.

From a student perspective, the careers and recruitment landscape are becoming more complex, with a growing mismatch between what employers expect of graduates and the skills graduates leave university with. No single party is at fault for this disparity, but it’s important that we work in a tripartite way (university, students and employers) to realign skills with expectations. 

Universities need to ensure that the skills being delivered are current, and what is needed by businesses. Employers need to engage with universities to identify skills gaps ‘from the coal face’ and students need to engage with careers services. At a time when there is uncertainty in recruitment (Post-Brexit, post-Covid, and with the rapid emergence of AI), you would expect students to be eager to seek expert advice. However, current research suggests student engagement is in decline, in part due to a collective “loss of confidence”.

By mapping the skills to the curriculum, implementing a whole curriculum, multi-stakeholder approach, HBS is trying to tackle these challenges head-on, and in a strategic way.

About the authors

Adam Argent is an Employability and Placement Officer within HBS. His role is to support students with their career readiness, improve their employability, and help students to secure industry placements as part of their degree.

Janna Wood is the Academic Lead for Employability and Graduate Outcomes across HBS. She encourages collaboration across support services and academic teams to drive the employability strategy and deliver on relevant initiatives and KPIs.

Eleanor Davies is Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) and Professor of Work Psychology at HBS. She has over 20 years of experience of leading in teaching and learning, with particular interests in whole-curriculum development and delivering integrated learning approaches.