School Work Experience?

[Clodbuster]

Do many companies participate in this excercise where they take on a 15/16 year old still at school for a week (free) ?
The reason I ask is my grandsons (15 yo) class of 160 have only had 26 taken up. (I'm taking on 2 but I must admit it is the first time I've been asked and only really doing because of the association.) One week with one then the next with the other.

Anyone in the Norwich, Norfolk area who will take him on ?

 

[Ozzy]

We do at the riding school (Northampton). It is a widely known issue in education that businesses are not so willing to support work experience these days as did way back when, and it's a nightmare to try and find placements (speaking as a school governor there)

I wish I knew the solution on how to improve the uptake.

 

[pentel]

Issues that make tis difficult are the need to do risk assessments for under 18s, insurance, induction a
etc etc etc, all for 1 week.

 

[Newchodge]

Issues that make tis difficult are the need to do risk assessments for under 18s, insurance, induction a
etc etc etc, all for 1 week.

All for 1 week with little immediate benefit to the business.

 

[Ozzy]

little immediate benefit

That seems to be the issue; quite short-sighted, looking for an immediate benefit, but will then respond to Chamber of Commerce or other surveys about employment issues, claiming young people are not ready for the world of work.

Work experience is an investment in the future by people planting trees.

 

[StrategyDoctor]

@Ozzy is spot on, if we don’t offer placements and make them genuinely engaging, we can’t then complain that young people aren’t interested in our businesses or “not work ready”.

The reality is most businesses avoid it because it is time-consuming and a distraction — especially if you’re not prepared.

Best thing we did (manufacturing environment) was treat it like a structured programme, not a favour:

• Designed the full week in advance
• Each department had simple SOPs / instructions ready
• Started with a “fake” customer order and then they went through the 'business process' → costing & pricing → BOM → purchasing → machining → assembly → inspection → delivery
  

They saw raw material (steel bar) made into a small screwed assembly. It gave them a proper end-to-end view of the business, kept them engaged, and meant the team weren’t inventing or scrambling to find things for them to do.

The student left with a small portfolio of what they’d done (nice touch sending it to their home after) — and we only had about half a day of genuine downtime to manage in each department.

If you don’t structure it, it’s a burden. If you do, it’s actually a decent investment and relatively easy to do.

Curious — has anyone else found a way to make placements work without it becoming a drain on the team?

 

[Ozzy]

The student left with a small portfolio of what they’d done (nice touch sending it to their home after) — and we only had about half a day of genuine downtime to manage in each department.

That sounds fantastic. We've done similar things with Levi's, Amazon and Volvo - which is great as they have dedicated teams setup to do this sort of engagement.
My frustration is that these size of businesses only make up a fraction of the businesses out there where young people will find work. Having smaller businesses being up to think that way, even if what they do isn't as bells and whistles as that would be amazing; and make a massive difference to the future workforce (talent pipeline).

 

[pentel]

Off on a slightly different tangent while I was still in manufacturing we employed 1 student each year who was doing a product design degree come to us to spend a year in industry. Same amount of preliminary work as work experience but a whole different ball game re our commitment including training and report writing.

The difference this made to the students both in the skills they took to their final year and subsequent employability was really appreciated by them and I am still in contact with some of them years down the line.

We did pay the students in line with their skill change throughout the year and employing them was always a net contribution to the bottom line over the year. ( we had no idea if this would be the case the first year)

Having more recently spoken to lecturers it seems that this type of placement is getting harder and harder to find which is a shame.

How did we start doing this? We were approached by a student who had been let down for a placement last minute and who had approached every possible company he could find in the area. It was not something that we planned to do but he impressed us so much we decided to give it a go!

If you are a position to consider offering a placement please look into it!!!