Role of industry employers in fostering employability skills

Graduate skills and employability discussions have continued to be a contentious issue for both international and local employers. The concerns of industry employers stem from their inability to acquire graduates with the requisite skills and competencies to effectively solve arising industry problems. This concern has led employers to cast blames on higher education institutions (HEIs), who they feel are responsible for the development of these skills which employers continuously seek from fresh graduates. Subsequently, present-day employers have sought innovative ways to train and re-train new employees to help ease their transition into the world of work. This paper identifies the various approaches and ways by which industry employers develop the required skills of graduates. An extant review of literature was conducted from databases such as Academic Search Complete, ASCE conference proceedings, EBSCOhost, Emerald, ERIC, Science Direct, Scopus, Springer, Taylor and Francis online, amongst others. One of the primary findings stemming from this study revealed that in-house training, job rotation, coaching and mentoring, and cross-functional teams are some of the key approaches by which industry employers can develop skills and competencies among fresh graduates. This study concludes that HEIs are not solely responsible for the development of employability skills among graduates, but reckons that both the employers of labour and graduates themselves have a crucial role to play in the construction education discourse.