Assessing Readiness for Employer Engagement and Building Powerful Partnerships
Powerful Partnerships are essential when offering intentional, meaningful employer engagement and by building strong sustainable relationships it can support UK schools/colleges to achieve Gatsby Benchmarks 2. Learning from career and labour market information, 4. Linking curriculum learning to careers, 5. Encounters with employers and employees and 6. Experiences of the workplaces. Ofsted’s ‘Getting Ready for Work’ report also highlights the importance of strong relationships to ensure intentional employer engagement happens in schools and colleges.
The aim of this unit is to get you started to assess the readiness of your school/college and employers for employer engagement and developing powerful partnerships. Once you have completed this unit be sure to move on to the other guidance units: Assessing Readiness – Employers and Assessing Readiness – School/College which provide practical tools and advice. Completing all three units will provide an overview and complete picture of current activity and partnerships which will provide the springboard and starting point for future engagement.
Once you have assessed the readiness of both school/ college and employer you can move on to the next set of resource units ‘Outreach Strategy for Powerful Partnership’ Part 1 and Part 2 to be sure you have the tools and knowledge to build strong sustainable relationships. Also don’t forget to check out the final unit ‘5 Key Tips to Building Partnerships’ which is a quick guide for you and your team when building meaningful employer partnerships.
The diagram, from Ford Next Generation Learning, shows the process you will need to follow to ensure you build and retain powerful partnerships starting with recruit and assess.
Who usually handles these types of assessments?
Assessing your readiness can be undertaken by any individual who will be responsible for employer engagement and outreach or any curriculum lead who intends to embed strong partnerships within their departments practice.
In most cases it would be recommended that one individual assess the readiness across the school/ college and with employers, this will generate more meaningful guidance, support consistency and give a complete picture.
Readiness assessment is not meant to be a critical evaluation of any sort. It is, instead, an opportunity for those exploring employer engagement and powerful partnerships to understand what structures, resources, and support exist and what structures, resources, and support need to be in place in order to promote successful partnerships. By using the tools and reading the guidance documents you can start your readiness assessment (or exploration) in your school/college in the right way by reassuring colleagues that the information gathered will only be used to help them and the partnerships they enter into. The greatest benefit to be gained will be the positive impact on students’ school/ college experience and the opportunities that arise for them from the partnerships.
Who normally gets assessed?
You will want to assess all stakeholders who are directly or indirectly involved in your partnerships.
This will give you a platform and starting point to ensure your engagement and partnerships will succeed. Among the groups you will assess are:
- Senior Leaders
- Teachers/Curriculum Leads
- Participating students
- Employers
Do I assess employers, partners and the school/ college more than one time?
Yes! You will find both the need and the value in assessing certain stakeholders again in some form. For example, you may need to reassess and revisit when there is a change in personnel, an employer partnership leadership change, or there are structural changes in one of the organisations.
What do I do with the information gathered?
Documenting what you discover is important for all parties within the relationship. Your documentation is a communication tool that will help lay the groundwork with and for your outreach and partnerships. It is intended to help everyone build a shared understanding of expectations, areas for growth, and assets available for growing the partnership and engaging the students (and teachers) in different ways. You can use the ‘Observation Rubric Tools’ in the next units to help you do this.
Remember! assessing readiness never really ends. It is an ongoing element of your employer engagement outreach and powerful partnerships to ensure success!
