The Skills Access Hub - a University of Nottingham business engagement project

The Institute of Student Employers held their annual awards event last week, Tuesday 25 June, at the conclusion of their Student Recruitment Conference. The Careers and Employability Service at the University of Nottingham was shortlisted for the Best Employer Engagement Strategy award, for our Skills Access Hub project.

Whilst we didn't win we continue to be very proud of the work we've done to help regional businesses understand more about how to recruit talented students and graduates into their organisations. We've decided to share our award submission, to explain more about our Skills Access Hub project and I'm hugely grateful to Gurjit Chahal , Matt Vincent and Vicky Torr for their work on the programme as well as Jackie Thompson , Joss Hillary and Maisie Southon for their support in putting materials together for the award nomination.

What was the issue we were trying to resolve, when creating the Skills Access Hub?

The East Midlands region has the lowest level of graduate retention in the UK. According to the last four Graduate Outcomes surveys, less than 40% of students taught here remain in the region in highly skilled occupations, hindering the ability for local companies to hire talented students and graduates. This is a longstanding problem for businesses in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Leicestershire. In comparison, both the West Midlands and Yorkshire & the Humber regional traditionally retain around 50% of their graduates.

There are significant economic and social impacts on retaining graduates within a region. Graduates contribute to the local economy through stimulating growth and creating a multiplier effect as their spending circulates within the local area. They also often bring new ideas, skills, and connections, fostering innovation and knowledge sharing within an organisation.

Graduates’ skills meet local industry needs, reducing recruitment costs and promoting stability. They enrich the community with diverse perspectives and contribute to social initiatives. Their engagement helps address local challenges, build social cohesion, and improve the overall quality of life in the region.

The University of Nottingham (UoN) has civic responsibility to help address the difficulties faced by local businesses trying to recruit talent. There was a perception amongst employers that students didn’t consider opportunities within the region and that local universities didn’t do enough to encourage students to remain in the East Midlands.

Those perceptions needed addressing and challenging. As a university we needed to source more opportunities for our students to stay within the East Midlands (and particularly Nottingham) area whilst also engaging employers with the benefits of recruiting graduates. To do that, we needed a dedicated programme focusing on comprehensive support to students, graduates and employers that provided opportunities for growth and progression.

What was our approach and what were our targets?

During 2019, UoN approached Nottingham City Council to express interest in the final tranche of funding available from the European Social Fund. To support a broader, region wide, Growth Plan, UoN and the city council were keen to identify ways in which to make access to students and graduate talent easier and to encourage those candidates to remain in highly skilled occupations within the East Midlands and particularly Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

The UoN Employer Engagement Group was well aware of the challenges reported from employer contacts about hitting recruitment targets and the ‘brain drain’ to other parts of the UK.

The creation of the Skills Access Hub, within the D2N2 Growth Hub gave UoN the opportunity to deliver a strategic project to meet the important objective of increasing the number of graduates retained within the region.

Our strategy was quickly evolving – identify ways in which we could upskill employers to recruit graduates and then utilise grants from the European Social Fund to subsidise the cost of recruitment to businesses that took part in our programme.

As well as supporting recruitment and retention of graduates, UoN was keen to identify ways in which access to its Executive Education programmes – skill development for leaders and managers – could be made more accessible, to support business growth.

Challenging targets were agreed with the local authority to deliver the Skills Access Hub. UoN was expected to create project plans with 130 organisations, have 97 of those businesses complete their project and see 325 individuals access the training and development opportunities we provided. There was also the need to demonstrate how that advice and guidance had a positive impact on the number of highly skilled opportunities were being filled through internships, placements and graduate roles.

Stakeholder support was crucial

The Skills Access Hub programme at UoN was managed and delivered by the Careers and Employability Service (CES) with support from the Business School (NUBS) between January 2021 and November 2023.

Within UoN a steering group of senior colleagues from NUBS (Director of Exec Ed and the Associate Professor for Business Engagement) alongside the CES Associate Director ensured that project progress was monitored and delivered in line with the European Social Fund objectives. A project delivery team from CES and NUBS met fortnightly to discuss programme progress and to resolve any queries from business participants.

We worked with businesses to establish what the barriers recruiting students and graduates were, and how the university could improve the talent pipeline. We did this through informal conversations, discussion at networking events and through formal feedback post careers fairs and presentations. The feedback we received felt genuine and insightful.

UoN invested in a specialist project officer for the role, by seconding an existing member of staff with experience in both business development and graduate recruitment. Our new Business Development Officer was the first point of contact for businesses seeking Skills Access Hub help and advice, and was supported by our Business Development Manager, Recruiter Services Team Leader, and the Work Experience Officer.

A significant issue for local businesses was affordability and resources – coming to careers fairs, running attraction campaigns and competitive remuneration were now a bigger challenge that practicalities around recruitment.

Hitting the target, and more

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a change of focus from advice and guidance to more direct intervention in the form of grants and bursaries which saw a significant increase in our actual outcomes.

Flexibility in the European Social Fund contract allowed us to redesign our support scheme. We identified how other agencies delivering projects within the wider Growth Hub had profiled and converted contacts into participating businesses. From January 2022 we focused interventions on providing grants and bursaries for activities, and after a slow 2021 the Skills Access Hub accelerated impact amongst business participants significantly. After a challenging start to the Skills Access Hub programme, from March 2022 onwards we were at or ahead of the contract targets.

The revised programme continued to offer advice and guidance, but also provided organisations with free stands at careers fairs, support with uploading job vacancies to the MyCareer portal, plus bursaries towards the cost of hiring interns and graduates.

Where job opportunities were available, the programme focused on supporting applications from candidates with a Widening Participation background – feedback from that group of students identified that they were unlikely to have the social capital of some of their peers, with previous work experience focused more on earning money rather than highly skilled opportunities.

All of the targets set were achieved and in the case of individual beneficiaries, exceeded. 445 individuals from 130 companies went through skill development sessions around recruitment and development, which also included masterclasses from a UoN alum worked as a Graduate Development professional. Over 60 students and graduates have found work in the region due to our scheme.

Other benefits gained from the Skills Access Hub programme have been development of a university-wide business-to-business conference in 2022 and 2023 with several hundred people attending. The knowledge gained from the programme was also key to a successful internal project bid to future develop resources for local businesses to improve equal, diverse and inclusive recruitment practice.

And what next?

During 2024 we've developed a joint programme between UoN and Nottingham Trent University focusing on Maximising Access to Talent. In March we held a roundtable discussion, supported by 30 businesses, focusing on recruitment, retention and development of talent - the outputs of which led to our Power of Partnerships event in June.

PoP '24 focused on recruitment, retention and development with a sprinkling of knowledge sharing around Artificial Intelligence, funding opportunities, talent pipelines, degree apprenticeships and the complexity of visa legislation. Another very successful day, with 100 delegates taking in keynote talks, workshops, networking and an exhibition with a lot of positive feedback. Plans are already underway for PoP '25.

Regional student and graduate retention is a big issue, it's not something that we can solve simply through roundtables, conferences, workshops and small scale investment programmes - but they're a start. Continually building on what we've done previously will make a positive impact and we're very proud of the work we've done so far, and plan to do this year, to keep developing opportunities in this area.

If you want to talk about student and graduate opportunities, get in touch - we're very happy to help! Start here on LinkedIn, and let's get the conversation going.