Are graduates more productive

1
Are graduates more productive?

• Sarah Rawlinson
• University of Derby
• S.Rawlinson_at_derby.ac.uk

2
Context of the study

• The Department for Education and Skills (DfES)
• study on Education and Skills The Economic
• Benefit (2003) suggests that there are higher
  returns for individuals who have a university
  degree and that highly educated people are more
  productive.
• The report claims that businesses can benefit in
  the forms of higher profits by making use of this
  higher productivity.

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Context of the study

• Research Questions
• How do we measure this productivity?
• How do we attribute this productivity to
  graduates only?
• Do employers see the benefits of employing
  graduates?

• Case Study
• The spa, beauty and hairdressing sector.
• Little or no experience of higher education.
• Graduates entering the industry.

4
Context of the study

• The changing nature of work
• Flatter organisational structures, as a result
  of downsizing and delayering, has led to the
  empowerment of individuals and greater autonomy
  and ownership of the work process. This change
  has placed greater emphasis on the knowledge and
  skills of individuals and has resulted in the
  need for a more educated workforce.
• (Harvey 2000)

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Context of the study

• Measuring Performance
• The balanced score card approach
• Kaplan and Norton (1992)
• The framework of intangible valuation areas
  (FIVA)
• Green and Ryan (2005)

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Pilot Study

• Aim
• Identify whether graduates in spa, beauty therapy
  and hairdressing were more productive than non
  graduates.

• Objectives
• Investigate the employment opportunities for
  graduates from spa, hairdressing and beauty
  therapy programmes.
• Identify the benefits graduates brought to the
  organisations that employed them.

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Research Approach

• An exploratory research approach was used to
  gain an understanding of the job roles graduates
  were performing and the types of organisations
  that had employed them.
• This approach provided an opportunity to
  investigate the context within which the wider
  study would take place and explore the activities
  that would need to form part of the measurement
  tool.

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Research Method

• Five organisations took part in the pilot study.
• Colleges and universities offering higher
  education programmes were approached by the Hair
  and Beauty Industry Authority to identify
  organisations that may take part in the study.
• Semi structured telephone interviews were used in
  all but one organisation.

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Findings

• The Pilot Study found
• Students were all employed in larger
  organisations
• All carried out treatments or services as part of
  their role
• None of the organisations set out to employ a
  graduate but would consider doing so in the
  future.

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Findings

• Employers suggested that they could not identify
  tangible benefits to employing a graduate but
  cited the following intangible benefits
• commitment to the industry
• a good understanding of the industry
• good management skills, spent time planning ahead
  and making improvements to the business
• confident, reliable and used their own
  initiative
• demonstrated leadership skills.

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Findings

• The pilot study suggests that
• Graduates are demonstrating greater autonomy and
  ownership of the work process
• Graduates are growing jobs within
  organisational structures
• Graduates first job is not in traditional
  graduate positions but in positions that
  initially provide low-level challenges.
• Identified by Harvey (2000)

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Findings

• Harvey (2000) suggests that the changing nature
  of work is benefiting non-traditional graduates.
• This change has placed greater emphasis on the
  knowledge and skills of individuals  and has
  resulted in the need for a more educated
  workforce.

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Conclusions

• This pilot study has identified that graduates
  in this industry are providing intangible assets
  that do not show on the organisations bottom
  line.
• The benefits that graduates bring to the
  industry are not easily measured by the
  organisation.

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Conclusions

• Many businesses do not know the true value of
  their intangible assets (Green and Ryan, 2005).
• There is a need to align an organisations
  business strategy and their intangible assets
  through a graduate impact framework (GIF)
  developed for this industry.

15
References

• Green, A. and Ryan, J.C.H. (2005) A framework of
  intangible valuation areas (FIVA). Aligning
  business strategy and intangible assets. Journal
  of Intellectual Capital. Vol. 6 No. 1 pp 43-52
• Harvey, L. (2000) New realities the relationship
  between higher education and employment.
  Tertiary Education and Management. Vol. 6 No. 1
  pp 3-17
• Kaplan, R.S. and Norton, D.P. (1992) The balanced
  scorecard measures that drive performance.
  Harvard Business Review. January February
  pp71-79