How Do You Focus Your Service Delivery? Enhancing Careers Guidance at Edge Hill University
When I was appointed to my current role in 2022, I inherited a service delivery model that hadn’t really changed much from when the service was established in the 1980s. We had Careers Advisers delivering a range of services to students including 1-2-1 guidance, teaching in the curriculum and extra-curricular workshops. We based our activities on what we knew students needed, and when they would need them. We were very experienced and successful in our approach. However, I wasn’t sure it was the right model for us to continue with well into the 21st Century. As the team has developed and changed, so have the needs of our students and how they choose to engage in our services.
The scrutiny on our sector has never been greater – or presented us with more opportunities to redefine what we do, how we do it and who we are. Our internal systems collect data on student engagement we could only have dreamed of previously. Using this data, and responses to our annual process of career readiness, I have been able to develop and implement a new approach to service delivery which places the student at the heart of our approach, whilst ensuring we are aligned to the strategic aims of the institution.
In this article, I explore how we have tailored our service delivery to respond to the personal needs of individual students through a data-focused approach. I outline the key action points that our team responds to and illustrate how our approach is oriented around 4 main pillars. I then reflect on how this approach has been successful and suggest how other services across the sector might use it to their advantage.
Personalisation is Key
Our data first approach to service delivery ensures we personalise our support to meet individual student need, thereby helping to increase student satisfaction and engagement. This approach aids retention by ensuring all support is targeted to student need.
All our activity is designed around a principal of student first:
What does the student need?
How would they like to access our support?
When do they want our support?
From Students to Successful Graduates: Action Points
The model below outlines our approach to enhancing the student experience, engaging students and recent graduates and ensuring a positive graduate outcome is achieved:
There are four main interaction points with the team:
Intra curricula: developed and delivered in conjunction with colleagues in Faculties.
1-2-1 and small group support (IAG): student initiated or referrals.
Extra curricula: Extra Edge Award, part time jobs, employability workshops, external employer led events.
Self-sourced: access to support outside office hours.
4 Pillars: Information, Advice, Education and Guidance
Our service delivery is focused around the four pillars of information, advice, education and guidance. Our career readiness process informs each type of interaction a student has:
The Results
The success of our approach is demonstrated by increasing graduate outcomes across all programmes, and quantifiable data on total student reach – this year alone we have already delivered embedded careers and employability sessions to over 75% of our students, compared with 50% in the last academic year. The use of technology to improve our reach has also seen a colossal return on investment. The introduction of an online tool to give feedback on CVs has seen a massive 895% increase in engagement with this service – and a valuable saving of nearly 2000 hours of staff time. That equates to more than one staff member for a fraction of the cost, with true 24/7/365 service availability.
Knowing what your students want, what we know they need, and how they want to access support is essential to aligning your service delivery model to be successful. The models above have helped my team to prioritise workloads, agree curriculum inputs with academic staff and most importantly meet student need.
Key Considerations for Careers Leaders
If you are interested in adopting an approach like this, here are some considerations to take into account:
Understand who your students are, and what their needs are. Our career readiness data provides us with such an invaluable insight into their needs. We keep this updated on an ongoing basis and embed the results into our curriculum delivery as well as our wider service delivery strategy.
Make time to reflect. Take a step back and dig down to understand the impact of your approach and what needs to be tweaked and refined.
Be bold. Any change process is challenging but in order to make large scale and impactful changes you need to be decisive, confident and structured in your approach.
Celebrate your success. Remember to celebrate the success stories and don’t just focus on the negatives!
Becka Colley-Foster is Head of Careers and Graduate Employability at Edge Hill University.
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