The Higher Education Academy commissioned a study to explore the experience of employees and their employers engaged in work-based learning and the impact that this learning has for them. The evidence indicates that higher education programmes of study have had a positive impact on employers and their employees. The benefits of this form of workforce development extend well beyond enhancing an individual's skills to the exchange or generation of new knowledge (in the workplace). That said the skills that are developed can be both technically specific for a job role function or sector of work as well as generic in nature. Moreover the individual employees have benefited in a way that has been described as 'capability extending' in terms of attitudes and approaches to work. They have also gained a wider appreciation of how what they do fits into the 'bigger picture' and this has led to increased confidence in their performance at work. Supporting the development of employees in this way has enabled employers to strengthen the human capital of their organisations irrespective of whether the intervention was a short business-focused programme of higher education or a full programme leading to an HE award.
