A compass for the roadmap: Navigating through UUK’s new future jobs report
This article was originally published on LinkedIn. You can find it here.
In this article, originally shared on LinkedIn, Gabi Binnie, Gradconsult’s Head of Programmes and Research, shares her thoughts on Universities UK’S 2026 Future Jobs Roadmap, published September 2026.
Universities UK released its 2026 Future Jobs Roadmap in early September. To those of us working in careers and employability in universities, early career recruitment and development in organisations, or bridging the gap between the two (as we at Gradconsult do), there’s little in the report that comes as a huge surprise, but plenty of space for discussion about how to solve some of the challenges it articulates.
One size does not fit all
UUK set out a number of recommendations for universities, employers and policy-makers to support graduate employability, including introducing graduate schemes for SMEs across every region of England by 2035. We have delivered and supported numerous programmes that connect SMEs to graduates over the past 15 years, including Graduates West Yorkshire (West Yorkshire), RISE (Sheffield City Region) and LCR Grad (Liverpool City Region).
The benefits of these programmes can be truly astonishing. From a regional economic perspective, RISE produced a return on investment of £19 for every £1 spent on the programme and a predicted £3.3million Gross Value Added into the region from jobs created. For individual graduates and businesses, the impact is just as important:
“I just wanted to say thank you so much for all your support throughout the programme… the journey has not always been easy, so this opportunity means a lot to me and I genuinely appreciate all the support, guidance and opportunities provided through the scheme during the process. I’ll always remember the support your team gave me throughout my applications and journey into graduate employment.” Graduate feedback
From our experiences, we’ve learned a lot about what makes regional programmes successful. Our regions – their business landscape, geography, student profile and challenges – are unique, so a regional programme must reflect the region’s distinctiveness. Even within regions, what works for a subset of the business makeup, whether that’s size of organisation, sector or growth aspirations, does not work for others. The design of any regional programme must reflect the nuances of what the business community really needs.
But the biggest challenge to implementing this recommendation is funding. Recruiting a large number of graduates to many different organisations – each with its own requirements around skills, knowledge and experience – requires time, graduate recruitment-specific expertise and resource.
During the two-year delivery period of one of these programmes, we received c.2310 applications, assessed over 900 graduates through an immersive development centre and scoped over 120 distinct roles. The nature of regional programmes allows for some economies of scale, but their success often lies in it still feeling like a personal and tailored approach for the businesses and graduates alike.
Ready to work?
Work-readiness is another key theme, and something Mike Grey FRSA recently discussed on an ISE insights webinar. UUK’s report highlights that only 35% of graduates have all the skills that employers would expect of them, from basic timekeeping to critical thinking and problem solving.
Over the past three years, we have been moving away from talking about ‘work-readiness’ as a deficit model – that graduates are/aren’t work-ready, that they have/don’t have sufficient skills – to recognising that developing the mindsets, skills and behaviours that lead to success in the workplace requires time, effort and support. The behaviours and habits that lead graduates to be successful in an educational context don’t translate into, and can even hamper, success in employment.
Our Student to Professional (STP) model, which was developed through rigorous research with universities, employers, occupational psychologists and graduates/early career hires identified nine distinct mindset and behavioural shifts that happen as graduates transition from education to employment.
By recognising this unique period of change in a graduate’s life, we can be more specific about what ‘work-readiness’ actually is and use shared objective language (rather than a deficit model) to articulate the changes in behaviours that are required.
Work-based learning for all
The recommendation of ‘Setting a target for all undergraduate students to have the opportunity to access work-based learning activities by 2035, with a milestone of 50% at 2030 recommendation’ (in England) is intended to form part of the solution to the work-readiness challenge.
In the sector, the language of ‘work-based learning’ is evolving towards ‘work-related learning’, acknowledging that the skills, competencies and behaviours that make a graduate ‘work-ready’ don’t necessarily need to be developed within the workplace.
Most of the universities we work with already have ambitious targets for equitable access to work-based learning for students, employers simply don’t have the capacity to provide the volume of opportunities that is needed. We hope that the Roadmap is right that more partnerships between universities and employers, and policy levers like mandatory work experience requirements, will result in the scale of opportunities required, but resource to support careers teams to create more opportunities for work-related learning is needed too.
To deliver large scale student engagement in this type of learning requires a strategic approach linking curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular provision into a cohesive offer so that all students can access a compelling package of opportunities regardless of their degree discipline.
Some of the ways this can be done include:
Embedding real-world projects to deliver equitable career development for students
Developing industry authentic assessments and engaging employers to contextualise their relevance to graduate-level professional life
Ensuring there are synoptic assessments that encourage students to reflect on their employability development throughout their wider course
Involving practitioners, employers or community groups in the setting of assessments and as the audience for students’ reporting
Inviting alumni to speak who are applying their skills in a diverse set of sectors to illustrate the non-linear nature of the graduate market
Developing an employer advisory board with a specific brief to inform curriculum design
Where to next?
It is encouraging to see Universities UK placing graduate employability so firmly in the spotlight. The Roadmap’s recommendations are laudable, but the nuance of how they are implemented will be crucial to making positive change for graduates a reality. Meaningful engagement with university leaders, careers teams, sector organisations and early talent professionals can help translate these ambitions into approaches that really work, especially within a climate of uncertainty for universities and employers alike.
Universities UK and other sector bodies have a key role to play in continuing to champion graduate employability at a policy level. Investment from government – at a national and regional level – is the real silver bullet to creating the economic conditions that support the growth in graduate jobs and other employer-led opportunities. The Roadmap is a great starting point on what is a much longer journey.