Exploration of Employability Skills in Business Management Studies Within Higher Education Levels

Abstract

Higher education in the United Kingdom is becoming more responsible to focus beyond teaching and learning process; this is evolving to further reflect the needs of the marketplace, engagement with firms within the industry, responsibility to enhance talent, and to close the skills gap to prepare students for employment opportunities during studies and after graduation. The purpose of this study is to provide the key employability skills in business management studies within higher education with further focus on the UK as one of the leading Western and knowledge-based economies through a systematic literature review process. The study also aims to highlight employability skills reported in the selected studies by categorising them into three main categories: very common employability skills required, common employability skills required, and uncommon employability skills required. However, throughout the studies included in the review, focus on specific skills varied due to the way researchers assessed as well as external factors taken into consideration such as cultural differences, external environment changes, the type of educational institutions, and the way curriculum was delivered, as well as the variations of specific interests of employers from a sector to another. The review is organised in six key sections: Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results and Analysis, Discussion, and lastly, Conclusion and Implications. The reported employability skills resulted in the review can be taken into consideration to further enhance understanding of how employability skills can be embedded into curriculum within business management schools in the UK and other organisations that are responsible for articulation of employment related policies for students and recent graduates. The review can also establish that enhancement of employability skills should be a collective responsibility including universities, employers, policymakers, and students to ensure that educational outcomes are meeting the needs of the market. Higher education providers should aim to close the gap of employability by the point of graduation stage and to be ready to compete in the overcrowded labour market.

Development of Learning Resources within Higher Education in Response to the Challenges of COVID 19

“…Different additional activities were utilized across different lectures to give students a better understanding of the educational and reflective writing process. At the same time, they are being engaged online, connect with the assessment requirements, actively engage all students in the learning process, get students to work together in online groups, application of the knowledge they had from lectures to their contexts (Alharahsheh & Pius, 2020b;Alharahsheh & Pius, 2019). All activities were designed based on the module's learning outcomes to enhance formative assessment, increase students' engagement and to learn online, and allow all students to start their summative assessment, which was developed as the following:…”

“…To meet further the learning outcomes, develop key employability skills, engage students, and ensure that students are working towards the assessment in one of the core modules in the CERT HE programs at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David -London. The module is delivered in the final term of the year/program: Professional career development Module (Level 4), derived from Biggs (1999) argument that previously, students at university seemed to be happy about having the traditional way of learning, which is by attending lectures and supporting tutorials regardless of the challenges around the learning process, whereas nowadays teaching is more demanding as students' body have become more diversified in many different ways (Alharahsheh & Pius, 2019) such as age, background, experience, domestic and international, and have various prior educational achievements (Alharahsheh & Pius, 2020b).…”

International Students’ Learning Experience on Global Curriculum

“…Currently, many students prefer working or learning away from their country of birth and, as a result, living in a globalized society (Alharahsheh & Pius, 2019a, 2020a; Helmi & Pius, 2018b). However, for them to be ready to access job opportunities, they are required to acquire subject-specific knowledge and skills to prepare them to be ready to compete in the globalized market or society (Alharahsheh & Pius, 2019b).…”