Connecting Education and the Workplace

The 2024 Workplace Challenge

Workplace analysis reports across the world are showing increasing levels of dissatisfaction in the employment environment, with many workers citing lack of satisfaction, workplace practices, poor management and health and well-being concerns affecting their productivity and job satisfaction. The impact of new technologies and automation in the workplace is increasing the anxieties which many workers have about how prepared they are for the future.

In addition, such comprehensive analysis as the Gallup 2024 State of the Global Workplace report show that younger people including recent graduates who enter the workforce are experiencing much higher levels of dissatisfaction compared with their older colleagues.

How much of this dissatisfaction could be linked to a disconnect between how our education systems currently teach students and the reality of the world they enter after graduating from further and higher education and vocational training courses?

Gallup estimates that low employee engagement costs the global economy US$8 .9 trillion, or 9% of global GDP.

We need to develop a mutually beneficial relationship between education and working lives that leads to greater fulfilment in both these activities, a higher level of personal development, greater innovation and reduced skills gaps in the workplace.

CoursePulse: for Better Education, Job Readiness and Workplace Preparation

CoursePulse is designed to align academic and vocational curricula with industry needs by integrating dynamic feedback from students, graduates, alumni and employers and linking this with data from skills gaps and employability trends. At present there are no tools that bring together all these elements in a systematic way to develop relevant skills within the teaching curriculum.

CoursePulse offers the opportunity to ensure that courses remain responsive to evolving workplace demands, creating graduates who are better equipped and prepared for future employment challenges by customising curriculum to support enhanced graduate readiness.

The Gallup 2024 State of the Global Workplace report highlights that a lack of clarity in workplace expectations between employees and their managers contributes significantly to high levels of reported stress and increasing workplace disengagement. According to Gallup, for example, only 19% of French employees are engaged at work, a trend linked to mismatched career expectations and roles.

CoursePulse Links Education and the Workplace in a Unique Way:

By integrating employer feedback into academic programs, CoursePulse can tailor course content to reflect real-world skills and expectations. For example, focusing on project management or digital collaboration tools directly addresses challenges graduates might face in modern workplaces.

CoursePulse can foster alignment by guiding students toward career paths based on their strengths and industry trends.

Developing Healthier Workplace Practices:

In the UK the Institute for Public Policy and Research (IPPR), has produced the IPPR report Healthy Industry, Prosperous Economy (2024), which also links workplace stress to presenteeism and lack of preparedness for health-conscious work environments. The IPPR reports that:

The annual hidden cost of employee sickness has risen by £30 billion since 2018. Most of this increased cost (£25 billion) is from lower productivity, with only £5 billion due to a rise in sick days.Employees now lose the equivalent of 44 days’ productivity on average due to working through sickness, up from 35 days in 2018, and lose a further 6.7 days taking sick leave, up from 3.7 days in 2018

CoursePulse can be used to embed health-related topics, such as stress management, work-life balance, and resilience training into the curriculum, ensuring that graduates enter the workforce with the tools to maintain well-being as both managers and employees.

Real-Time Feedback:

By gathering real-time input from students, graduates, alumni and employers, and linking this to the latest evolving data for skills and employment trends, the tool ensures that any gaps in employability skills are addressed promptly during course development and delivery, reducing the mismatch between academic preparation and job market needs.

Data-Driven Adjustments:

The tool uses skills gap and employability data analysis to highlight industry demand trends and ensures that students are trained in the skills most valued by employers and relevant to employees.

CoursePulse can support the development of both the ‘hard’ core skills needed in an industry specialism whilst also honing the ‘soft’ skills of critical thinking, adaptability and problem solving that can empower all employees to be more fulfilled and productive in the workplace.

CoursePulse - Reducing Transition Stress from Education to Employment:

As seen in the Gallup report, unclear expectations can lead to early-career stress. CoursePulse enables those delivery courses to clarify these expectations before students complete their programmes, through incorporating the feedback from previous course graduates, alumni and employers who have recruited students with a view towards easing transitions into the workplace.

Improving Workforce Productivity:

The IPPR report also identifies presenteeism as a significant productivity barrier. By preparing students for adaptive, health-conscious roles, the tool can prepare graduates for the expectations generated by early-career presenteeism.

CoursePulse offers an innovative solution to bridge the gap between education and employment, addressing key issues highlighted in the Gallup and IPPR reports.

By dynamically aligning curricula with industry and health-conscious workplace needs, it equips graduates with the skills and resilience to thrive, while fostering healthier and more engaged work environments.

With CoursePulse, Educational Curriculum Transformation can address increased challenges in the workplace.

The move to provide more internship opportunities ephasised by some in the education sector, while positive, may not address the problem completely. By bringing all those with a stake in the closer alignment of education and employment together, CoursePulse create a genuinely interactive relationship between the worlds of education and the world of work – a two way engagement.

Connecting Education and the Workplace - CoursePulse