Designing workplace induction programs to support the transition of new-career engineers to practice

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to focus on transition of engineering graduates to work. It asks: “What approaches and enabling activities can organisational induction programs use to support successful transition to practice for new-career engineers?”

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is grounded in literature review; it discusses central themes in the literature relating to transition to the workplace for Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) graduates. These include: skills required for the workplace; challenging factors in the transition to workplace; and, disciplinary socialisation.

Findings

There is a lack of literature that explores the design of workplace induction programs to assist novice engineers transition to professional work. An emerging topic in the literature is educational institution and employing organisation co-production of induction and transition to work programs.

Originality/value

Much of the literature relating to transition to work programs is from higher education rather than from the viewpoint of the workplace. This review contributes to knowledge of transition to work for early-career engineers from the perspective of workplace development programs.

Citation

Hawse, S. and Wood, L.N. (2019), "Designing workplace induction programs to support the transition of new-career engineers to practice", Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 18-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-02-2018-0014