Skip to main

A new operating model for Career Services in Scotland

Vision

Why: people in Scotland have skills and experiences that allow them to grow and succeed in a rapidly changing world 

How: working together to make services better 

Click to view the Target Operating Model image in a new window

What is the operating model? 

Put simply, the operating model is a high-level overview of how services should be organised to deliver on the career review recommendations. 

It outlines a vision for Scotland’s career services and describes how that vision can be delivered. 

It expresses a set of outcomes that the system needs to deliver and describes a set of principles that future services can be built upon and to which they must align. 

It is important to note that the operating model doesn’t try to describe the individual services which different customer groups will access. 

career services collaborative

FAQs

The purpose of the operating model is to help translate Careers By Design into operational services. 

Careers By Design highlights a range of themes which require a systemic and integrated response across multiple providers of career services. These include: 

  • Fragmented and complex delivery landscape 
  • Limited oversight of the system 
  • Not everyone has equal access to service 
  • Services are largely measured on activity not outcomes 
  • A need to maximise resource to meet demand for services 
  • Career education is not systemically embedded into curricula 

By defining a common vision, shared outcomes and a consistent set of service delivery principles, we can ensure that the career services of the future start to address these issues, ensuring that career support is ‘structurally unavoidable’. 

The operating model will be used to shape the development of Scotland’s future career services: 

  • to unite the system behind a common vision 
  • to build consistency and connectivity through co-design 
  • to empower our changemaker communities 
  • to bring definition to the remit of the Career Services Collaborative 
  • to provide a framework for measurement, evaluation & improvement 

Initially the operating model will be used to co-design how services across the ecosystem will be changed in response to the review recommendations. 

The Career Services Collaborative will ensure services across the eco-system continue to deliver on the operating model through the ongoing collaborative approach to monitoring, evaluation and impact of services 

The Career Services Collaborative [link] will also regularly review the operating model in light of evidence. 

The operating model builds on the comprehensive insight, evidence and co-design undertaken through the review. It directly responds to the design principles and recommendations, co-designed with stakeholders, practitioners and those with lived experience of services. 

Career Review

Over recent months we have worked with partners across Scotland on the most comprehensive review of Scotland’s career services in a generation.

Career Review

Career Services Collaborative

The Career Services Collaborative is the mechanism to lead the change, innovation and improvement required to deliver the operating model now and in the future.

The Career Services Collaborative