EDUCATION FOR INNOVATION AND WORKPLACE SKILLS FOR EMPLOYABILITY

Education is considered as one of the main drivers for social and economic growth through a transformational act of individuals who are seeking self-improvement and employability i.e. it’s a means of providing human power for organisations. Nimmi and Zakkariya (2016) postulated that the human capital theory of innovation and economic performance emphasise the value of employability in advancing human capital for economic growth. Enhancing employment here is related to enhancing graduates’ soft and hard skills which includes subject understanding, skilful knowledge, self-awareness and metacognition (USEM Model).
This article considers the forces shaping educational innovation as a means of impacting students’ employability in the globalisation era. Accordingly, it’s of interest to higher education providers to invest in their educational programs to improve their graduate employment rates through providing them with a quality innovative education system.
This research presents a qualitative case study exploring the impact of an innovation program on enhancing students’ workplace skills for employability. The setting of this case study is a private tertiary education institute based in Auckland, New Zealand. The strategies used in this case study aim to enhance students’ employability by providing the students with a real life work experience through an innovative research project, utilising entrepreneurial modules and training the students on much needed soft and hard skills e.g. management skills, writing skills, presentation skills, interviewing skills as part of a board of directors and reflecting on their learning journey. That would concur with Knight and Yorke (2003) USEM model which stands for the following four elements for employability: Understanding, Skilful practice, Efficacy beliefs and Metacognition i.e. the ability to reflect and think strategically.

Findings – workplace skills for employability
• Teams with radical projects indicated high level of critical and reflective abilities demonstrated in their research project reports and presentations. This is in alignment with Harvey (2003) justification that such attributes would empower and enhance learner’s competences leading to employability.
• Teams with incremental and/or imitation projects lacked depth in technical skills and critical analysis. This was further reinforced in the individual reflections that revealed lack of individual confidence. Moreover, team’s culture lacked cohesiveness and accountability of team members which contributed to such results.
• Teams who exhibited high level of “participative” skills which was advocated by Garcia‐Aracil et al. (2004) are the ones that revealed high potential in decision-making, assertiveness and involvement in their innovative research project. Thus, we can deduce that they possess some of the required workplace skills for employability
• This program (i.e. the 3 courses of innovation courses especially the final innovation project) provides a good training opportunity for students to enhance both their soft and hard skills demonstrated in the USEM Model.