Introduction

Introduction

Employers continue to express the need for workers who have a range of transferable skills, variously called ‘soft skills’, ‘enterprise skills’, or simply ‘capabilities’ (Archer & Williamson, 2008; McIntosh, 2017). Similarly, job seekers are required to provide evidence of capabilities to successfully gain employment in today’s rapidly changing employment context (Belt, Drake & Chapman, 2010; Bull, 2015; Chaudhuri & Cabau, 2017; Waltz, 2011). However, the terms ‘capability’ and ‘competency’ are often used interchangeably, creating confusion for employers, educators, and job seekers (York, 2006).

In this research, competency is seen as relating to the job or role-specific tasks or outcomes required in some occupations, or that may be mandatory for professional groups as with Nursing, Occupational Therapists or Midwives. Capability sits more in the context of the personal, intrapersonal, and cognitive functions of the person undertaking an employed role while adequately fulfilling the many variables associated with working across teams, jobs and environments (both analogue and digital) in which employees find themselves (Scott, Chang & Grebennikov, 2010).

The focus of this study is to acknowledge and understand capability as an additional value or augmentation of an employee’s competency in a particular skill area, thereby enhancing for example, a graduate’s employability. In this project, the following definition of learner capabilities is used.

[Learner capabilities are] “a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and economy” (Yorke & Knight, 2006, p. 3).