Workplace learning is increasingly central to the international lifelong learning agenda but has made limited contributions to full-time vocational education in England during the last 30 years. A more central role is envisaged within the technical education proposed by the 2016 Sainsbury Review and Post-16 Skills Plan , with access to work placements dominating discussion of policy implementation. A multicase study of workplace learning among post-16 students in England on current 'study programmes' was mapped to four of the technical routes designated by the Sainsbury Review and Skills Plan, using documentary, observation and interview data. The study drew on theorisation of the workplace as the site of situated or incidental learning, whilst noting that its opportunities are differentially allocated according to organisational or personal differences, in ways that have particular implications for young people on placements. Whilst access to more advanced learning opportunities was secured through planned, collaborative approaches, reliance on incidental learning offered more routinised experiences to students less prepared for autonomous learning. The study indicates that questions of access, knowledge and pedagogy remain to be addressed if plans for 'technical education' in England are to provide meaningful learning opportunities and support transitions to fulfilling work.

IT competency plays a vital role in knowledge management processes. Information technology affects an organization’s ability to store and recall knowledge that has been made explicit through codification, including different forms such as written documents, reports, presentations, patents, formulas, etc. This study aims to measure the influence of a company’s IT competency dimensions such as IT-knowledge, IT-operations, and IT-infrastructure on knowledge sharing. For this purpose, a survey of 910 Polish employees with different roles and experiences and across different industries has been conducted. The data were analyzed with a structural equation modeling method (SEM). Findings suggest that infrastructure is not a significant IT competency when it comes to knowledge sharing, whereas IT-knowledge and IT- operations are. It means that infrastructure should be perceived as a necessary but not sufficient factor to ensure the knowledge-sharing flow in organizations. This conclusion leads to the interesting implication that IT-operations and ITknowledge are actually the vital factors to support effective knowledge sharing. It means that business case knowledge, which is pivotal for effective operations is fundamental for developing IT competency. It means that knowledge workers who act as “bridges” between IT and business operations became more and more valuable human capital assets.

This paper investigates to what extent self-rated job-specific and generic skills and different types of educational signals are positively related to the labor market integration process of Dutch graduates, 18 months after finishing upper secondary vocational education. Our contributions to the current literature are that of simultaneously investigating these different types of skills and (a more extensive concept of) educational signals, and moreover examining to what extent the impact of self-rated specific skills and educational signals differ between the four labor market outcomes under investigation. We analyzed secondary survey data from the VET survey collected in the Netherlands in 2015. Results indicate that (1) self-rated specific skills—acquired either in education or on the job—are more positively related to favorable labor market outcomes than self-rated generic skills in the first 18 months of graduates' integration process, (2) only certain educational signals positively impact labor market integration, and (3) the positive impact of self-rated specific skills and signals varies between different labor market outcomes.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2007), over 10,000 formerly incarcerated individuals are released each week from federal and state prisons. The purpose of this study is to draw upon human capital theory to examine the relationships between the types of training programs and gainful employment for formerly incarcerated individuals. Three types of training programs considered in this study are school-based training programs, pre-employment training programs, and postemployment training programs. Generalized linear mixed models are used to determine if each type of training program is related to employment status and income. Based on a sample from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), postemployment training programs are positively related to gainful employment for formerly incarcerated individuals. This result emphasizes the pivotal role of employers in addressing mass incarceration through human resources development (HRD).

The coming impact of technological innovation on employment makes it relevant to equip people to stay ahead of technological change. It is therefore appropriate to promote policies aimed at reskilling these workers and at making young people fit for the coming digital economy. The paper is structured as follows. The first paragraph gives a short definition of the digitalisation process that has been taking place for some years. The second one deals with the effects of the digital economy on employment. The third section is devoted to the skills requested by the digital economy. The fourth paragraph takes into consideration the measures and methods enabling workers to stay on the digital labour market. It also stresses the importance of all the stakeholders that are involved in such process and that play a role in promoting the preparation of the workforce for the digital future.

The article aims to analyze the cases of high skills human resources development (HRD) vocational training programs in future strategic industries. This article analyzes the cases of ongoing HRD training programs for strategic industries in Korea. The results of the analysis are as follows. First, the strategic industry training, carried out in specialized industrial training institutions in Korea, are mostly focused on the environmental, weather, and robotics industries, in addition to bio-industry. Second, the key drivers of future high skills strategy training turned out to be industrial convergence and globalization. Third, many experts were invited to be instructors to manage the quality of the high skills training programs. Based on the findings of these case studies, this article suggests the promotion of high skill vocational training for strategic industries in Korea.

To enhance employability and improve the career prospects of graduating students, this study explores the influence of practical experience on graduate employment outcomes in an Australian setting. To develop our understanding of the relative benefit of different forms of practical experience, the study evaluates the influence of both Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) and paid work in the final year of study on graduate employment and underemployment. Two samples are used, N= 628 and N= 237, to evaluate institutional data on practical experience combined with national data on graduate employment outcomes., Findings indicate that participating in WIL does not produce an increase in full-time employment rates. There is some evidence to suggest that it could lead to higher quality, relevant employment in both the short and long term. Paid employment during the final year of undergraduate study produced higher full-time employment rates, but had little effect on underemployment. Findings will help to inform stakeholders of the relative benefit of curricular and extra-curricular work experience and contribute to the dearth of empirical evidence on the value of activities designed to improve graduate employment prospects. This is particularly important given growth in the supply of graduates, concerns for credentialism, soft graduate labour markets and global economic weakening.

In recent decades, a growing body of literature has emerged to illustrate the strong pressure on higher education institutions to prepare graduates for the world of work. This paper examines studies that attempt to incorporate the concept of employability skills in the empirical analysis. It thus focuses on the conceptual discussion and methodological options to show how researchers cope empirically with the assumptions associated with employability skills. This literature survey offers a taxonomy of methods that distinguishes between direct and indirect, as well as supervised and unsupervised, methods for the collection of data on skills. Although the underlying premise of the available research is that higher education institutions and policymakers should be provided with information on employability skills, the studies examined in this paper suggest that the identification of those skills is an impossible endeavour. Agreement is only found on some cognitive, technical, and relational skills. More importantly, it is argued that the supply-side approach overlooks economic and social processes that might affect employability. The problem of graduates' employability transcends higher education institutions' provision of useful and matched skills.

Employability skills are identified as one of the valuable policy tools to upgrade mobility and earnings. Organization‟s employees are required to possess the knowledge and skills for increasing the organization‟s performance and competitiveness. Employability of graduates has become an issue that is not easy to be ignored in the global economy. However, the key employability skills need to be identify and categorised according to specific industry like interior design. It is a necessity to have a right set of employability skills for employer satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to find out the required skill set for enhancing the employability of graduates and employees majorly focusing on interior design sector. This paper proposed the set of skills important for employability of interior design. Prominent databases were searched using combination of keywords and based on that 105 papers were selected for study. They were further filtered based on their title, abstract and findings and finally 25 papers were left. We have majorly focused upon eight sets of skills: communication skills, problem solving skills, teamwork skills, design skills, project management skills, computer skills, personal attributes and pre-graduates work experiences. On the basis of above-mentioned skills a checklist has been proposed which has been verified based on the literature review. The implications of this study will be helpful in guiding both industry and academia in incorporating and enhancing these skills among professionals