Employers are giving young people a chance
It is often said that in times of financial difficulty employers aren’t interested in taking on new staff. At SummitSkills we’ve been running a project which blows this theory out of the water.
Since October 2012 we have been helping employers to ‘Test Drive Talent’ – giving talented, high performing students who need work experience the chance to impress an employer. These are the best of their class, students who have the ability but who have yet to experience a real-life work situation, and whose job prospects are limited as a result. We targeted employers who don’t usually take on work experience students or apprentices but who were willing to experience the benefits of mentoring a promising young adult for a short time. The project focused on showing those employers the benefits of inviting a young learner into their business, guiding them through the insurance, health and safety and other aspects of work placements that often put people off. We worked with three skill card scheme operators (JIB-PMES, JIB-ECS and Engineering Services SKILLcard) to create a brand new ‘work experience skill card’, enabling students who had the required health and safety awareness, some trade specific training, soft skills and punctuality to accompany employers on-site.
The response from employers has been even better than we could have hoped. We have exceeded all of our targets. Working with colleges and employers we have generated more than 300 work placements. Nearly 150 employers have signed our Youth Pledge, vowing to work closer with their local FE college to develop the skills of young people. More to the point, 45 young people who have secured apprenticeships now have bright prospects for a career in building services engineering industries with employers who recognise the value they bring.
There are several lessons we have learnt from the success of Test Drive Talent. It is clear that many employers want to give young people a chance – especially the most talented young learners who appreciate the opportunity they are being offered. We also learnt that the chance of valuable work experience motivates students, many of whom upped their game because they wanted to be in the eligible top 10% of their class. There are jobs out there for young people with the right attitude and skills – but we need to make it easier for employers and learners to get together and benefit from one another.
Our next task is to share these lessons - and the materials we produced to help both employers and work experience students - with training providers across the country. We plan to encourage many more of them to use this model, creating opportunities for learners and enabling employers to benefit from their skills and talents. Find out more at the first link below.
SummitSkills is the sector skills council for building services engineering.
Keith Marshall OBE, Chief Executive of SummitSkills
