Work Experience

Apart from making a real difference to someone’s working life, offering work experience is beneficial for
organisations for a number of reasons:

• Recruitment opportunities: providing work experience placements can be a way to access the local
  labour market and explore a talent pipeline that the employer would not have considered otherwise.
• Staff development: supervising and coaching young people on work experience offers an excellent
  opportunity to develop employees’ management capabilities, particularly for those who may not
  normally have any line management responsibilities.
• A more engaged workforce: providing work experience sends a positive message to the wider
  workforce about the values of the organisation, which can support efforts to build employee
  engagement.
• Engagement in the local community: investors, customers, consumers and service users have
  increasingly strong opinions about the ethical role employers can and should play in society. Work
  experience placements provide a valuable means of creating a positive image, in which the organisation
  helps to address social issues related to worklessness in the community.
• Contribution to economic development in the local area: by helping to tackle some of the issues
  around deprivation and youth unemployment.

Work experience can have a hugely positive impact on young people’s employability and can play a
significant role in attempts to reduce youth unemployment. It can:

• break the vicious circle that many young people find themselves in, where they can’t get a job
  because of lack of experience and can’t get experience because they can’t find a job
• provide young people with an understanding of the structure and reality of working life, which is
  crucial if they are to secure and sustain employment
• provide feedback and coaching to enable young people to develop skills, including those
  required in specific jobs and sectors
• help young people to make informed choices about their futures and allow them to learn more
  about specific industries, organisational cultures and job roles
• allow young people to gain experience of working with people, enhancing their social and
  communication skills, and awareness of how to present themselves and behave in a work context
• provide opportunities to learn about recruitment processes (such as how to do job interviews and
  how to apply for a job)
• provide a positive experience of the world of work that builds the young person’s confidence and
  motivation
• help young people to build their CVs (for instance by providing some formal training) and support
  them in the development of networks.

I am interested in creating a Work Experience vacancy click here to express your interest (19kb).

Further Reading

• Guide to creating Work Experience that works click here (1404kb).

• Work Experience & How Employers can get Involved click here (1628kb)

Please contact Nicola Boyd for further details.