Professor Martin Jones, Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire University, writes on the idea of job rotation and the role HE can play in such a space, as well as how his institution aims to emply the concept
Questions around the links between higher education and well-paid jobs for graduates are rarely far from the headlines. There is clearly the need for an honest conversation about the role of higher education and how the UK might achieve a better match between the supply and demand for graduate level skills. We need greater debate and synergy between the agendas and institutions of education, skills and industrial strategy, certainly in the context of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, where there are too few graduate level jobs. We also need to incentivise the take up of opportunities in the areas where we want to grow the economy and to preserve areas where we have comparative advantage.
This key ground—from skills to employment and beyond—has become apparent from the involvement of Staffordshire University in the Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP), alongside being recently invited to join the Investment UK Shared Prosperity Investment Board for the delivery of the Stoke programme.
Staffordshire University works on next generation ideas, with one key area being the links between skills, employment, employability support (including pre-employment training and coaching), lifelong learning, flexible delivery, and in-work support. The idea of Job Rotation (hereafter, JR) and the role that higher education can play in this landscape, is important. JR provides opportunities for unemployed people and up-skills existing employees. It can be applied in both public and private sectors and could be particularly useful for sectors or businesses who struggle to recruit and could be a solution to the UK’s long-lamented under-skilled labour market.
