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Work Experience Month · Insights from the Edge

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: You're listening to a new podcast from the Edge Foundation.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: This series is designed to be heard in short bursts, over coffee or a commute.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: We'll bring together experts in policy, research, and practice.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: We'll explore how education and the world of work are developing for young people and education providers.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: We'll be asking how that world will give young people across the UK the knowledge and skills they need to flourish in their future life and work.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Insights from the Edge.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, in this episode, we are going to be looking ahead to the highlight of your summer, which is National Work Experience Month, which is going to be happening in July for the first time this year.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Ollie Newton, Executive Director at Edge, and joining me are Nick Newman, who is the founder and CEO of National Careers Week, and Beryl Henshaw, who leads the Association of Education Business Professionals.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: And those two are some of the masterminds behind National Work Experience Month.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we're looking forward to hearing what it's all about.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Beryl, take us back to the start.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Why is work experience important for young people?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: What difference does it make?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It makes a massive difference.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of the problems that we have are because we've got generations that have actually missed work experience.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got young people that have never actually been into a workplace and have got no experience of the world of work.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: That affects decision making because how can they decide what they want to do in life if they've never actually sampled work in life in any form?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really, really sad when you're looking at some of the initiatives now to get young people into employers, and we've wasted years of their lives by not offering them what they should have actually had.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: This goes back to 2012 after the Wolf report and the dramatic effect of people making decisions wrongly to withdraw, providing young people with work experience.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So valuable, so absolutely valuable.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I totally agree, Barrel.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we we've both seen what a what a strong impact it can have on young people and how essential it is.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: On the flip side, because obviously it's a challenge if they don't have it.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: I know you work with lots of young people and you see the difference that work experience makes.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us about one or two examples where this has really helped young people to turn things around or get their career on track.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right, young people um not entirely engaged at school, but engaged with employers.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Phenomenal.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying you know the first match is the right match to an employer, but employers um seem to have a different way where they can actually engage with young people.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have young people that three examples whereby I have a young people young person that a little bit wayward, now studying law in York University.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely brilliant.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Another young person went into law, decided it wasn't for him.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's now in IT.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, young people can do a complete turnaround.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the young people the young person that's in IT, no infrastructure at home, no support, broken family, brought up in care, you've got to reach out and show the young people that you care.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Behaviour manifests itself in many ways, and if you keep knocking somebody on a regular basis, you expect to get knocked back.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we want to do is get everybody on this mission because together, absolutely collectively, we can all make a difference.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: There are pockets of excellent practice from many people.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We need to ramp that up and make sure that every young person has that opportunity to reach out and become something that they want to be.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is so relevant at the moment, not just for the broader group of young people, but for those young people who are at risk of disengaging.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Alan Milburn's report has really clearly flagged up that they're kind of in serious challenge.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is one of the potential answers.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I I love that point you're making about everyone pulling together, and I know that in your day job you work absolutely at that intersection of employers and education.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Why is it that more employers aren't offering work experience?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of barriers are they facing that you're helping them overcome?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a mismatch, we've regressed backwards 25 years, I would anticipate, whereby there is no consistent approach, and you've had many schools and many infrastructures that have not bothered with work experience, and it needs a nurturing, bringing on board, giving them a reason why they should invest in young people, you know, why they should, and a listening ear if they want to discuss something that's not quite right.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just send young people along, you can't let things happen.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We we had a cohort go out yesterday, one young man came home, didn't want it, didn't even give it a chance.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: He needs coaxing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's something not quite right.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the preparation before they've actually gone out?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then we've had another meaningful experience where a young person's been taken out to survey houses from an estate agent.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: The school's panicking.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he'd be in an office environment.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, he wanted to look at an estate agent's job.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is a meaningful experience.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So prep, I think, is a lot of it.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think we need to do more prep, and I think we need to do more engaging with parents and carers.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think you know, young people handled in a different way, giving a little bit more, scaling things down, getting back to basics where we used to get back to basics, talking to parents, talking to carers, and bringing businesses into schools, and then you know, looking after the businesses because they are so valuable.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's SMEs that provide a massive amount.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And SMEs give phenomenal jobs and phenomenal work experiences.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Barrel.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that kind of brokerage, that personal touch is so important in this space.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's what a lot of SMEs tell us they need when they're offering an apprenticeship, when they're offering a work experience place.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: As you said, a listening ear, so that if things go wrong, they've got a human to ring.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and our chair at Edge, our chair of trustees, Elaine, um, recently wrote an article that's also on the website, and we'll include a link in the show notes reflecting back about her time running the education business partnership in Lincoln and how important that role of brokerage has been.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we're we're big advocates of that here.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Nick, National Careers Week has had an enormous impact in the work that you've done there.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: What are you hoping to do to build on that through National Work Experience Month?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think sticking to what we do best, Ollie, you know, we know how to put a moment in time together.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that as Beryl's been saying, and a lot of marketplace already knows, um there's a a lot of good forces for you know for good out there when we're looking at WEX and a meaningful work experience.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you bring the disparate kind of elements together?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, it just made sense to look at creating another moment in time, July being very popular for work experience placements.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so, how can we pull this together as a celebration of what good and meaningful looks like?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's so important.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of schools out there that need help, you know, they need to know what this good looks like, and there's a lot of schools out there achieving great, great placement activities, and they can help those.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So this is about looking at what's good, talking to all the different regions, and then actually showing those examples and sharing those examples nationally.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like you need to see stuff sometimes to kind of open your imagination to see what is possible, and and that is what I'm hoping.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: This first step of the month of July to actually bring all the good elements together, present them nationally, so that those that need help, need ideas, need to know what this uh meaningful practice looks like, they get a great example to look at.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: You're absolutely right, it's just about giving people ideas.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the whole idea of work experience and careers guidance is about giving young people ideas of what they might want to do, but equally, businesses need ideas of what work experience could look like because lots of us think back to the examples of when we were at school or maybe kind of negative stereotypes that we've heard.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: So to hear some of those inspiring stories is gonna be really, really powerful.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, do you have a couple of kind of examples from your work, Nick, that of kind of great examples of work experience that you're gonna be sharing?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, something I was really hoping to highlight is that um we've seen, I think, the development of what they call virtual works, virtual work experience of late.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: So this balance between the kind of physical now look, we've got to, I think, accept that one of the big problems nationally with work experience opportunities for young people is what we call the social capital.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: So for so many now, the limitations for a young person's experience come down to parents and carers because in the old days we had the connection services, we we still have luckily organizations like the EBPs that Beryl represents out there helping.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of the emphasis now falls on parents and carers of young people to find those placements for their own students and for their own children, and that all comes down to social capital.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how how well connected are those parents and carers?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who do they know to talk to?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just not fair.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a fair, it's not equal, and it's not fair.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the bit that I think I feel the strongest about.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: So to balance that, yes, there's people out there providing what we call virtual work experience for those um students that can't get a physical WEX placement out there of quality, but even that, you know, is pretty poor experience.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think we've got to up the benchmarks that are lucky enough to be working with a few people on a uh what we're calling a WEX plus um uh alternative rather than this virtual.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Virtual sounds like it's gonna almost be a poor experience before you start because it's only digital, but it can be a fusion, it can be blended.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why can't you have a digitally delivered work experience for people, for young students at home and in school or not in school?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: That actually involves a package of physical things and tasks and activities for them to do.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry to not give specific examples, but I kind of I feel that the reason we're doing this is because we cannot rely on this uneven playing field of social capital being ultimately a fair spread when we all know it surely is not.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Nick.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: There's a really strong kind of social equality mission in making sure that everyone has access to those placements.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think you're right, we we saw obviously during COVID the growth of virtual opportunities, and it may be that that can play a part, but at that age, you have to have that human contact, don't you?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: You have to have the opportunity to learn in a real environment from people who've been doing a job and understand what they do that can be supplemented with virtual, but that doesn't answer the whole problem.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, and it's breaking down those jobs as well, Ollie.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, every job is a series of tasks, let's be honest.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's what a job is.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So why can't those tasks be broken down?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, virtual work experience shouldn't be looking at a website and asking a few questions.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: That is not an experience, you know.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: That can't be billed as a WECT experience.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: But we need to break jobs down into the tasks.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Those tasks can be delivered digitally, and maybe with a bit of guidance, you know, students then working in groups, working with teachers, um, maybe working with employees coming into school, like Burlo said, can then get a real quality work experience opportunity, not necessarily in the place of work.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it could be in their further education college in the community.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe we've got to be more adventurous about how we get a quality delivery.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because you guys are part of a bigger coalition who brought this together and things are always delivered better in partnership.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Nick, who else is part of this coalition that's going to be getting behind Work Experience Month?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're good selling for a start.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got, you know, the the Marvelous Edge Foundation involved, um, which we're honoured to have on board.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: We have got the AOC, the Association of Colleges, so David Hughes there, and that's really important because again, I do see that FE can play a part within the communities up and down the UK.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Got great resources there, they've got great expertise.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Why can't they be a part of a solution?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: But collaboration is always the best, as you rightly say.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Look, we can't do these things alone.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I've often believed, you know, people talk, you know, there's this phrase, isn't there, Ollie, about, oh, you know, that's the hill we're gonna kind of fight on.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's get everybody together who's on the same page on that hill.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's the important bit.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's all this silo mentality of, you know, little empires all over the place.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just stop it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Can we park all that nonsense, all right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And just get some good people all together that are all on the same page, all going in the same direction, so we genuinely can.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think you could achieve anything that is meaningful or have longevity without collaboration.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: We start small, we start with this little collective, there's employability UK as well involved in that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now look, we've got to have this as a beginning.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is a start.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's far from a complete picture, but I think we've got to show that there's so much good stuff going on, and then let's share that.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: But Beryl hit upon a really important point early, and I know you feel strongly about this, Ollie, too, that you know, look, SMEs, I think the figure was like over 70 odd percent of all job opportunities are provided by SMEs, you know, and and they are the hardest group to actually get involved in work experience.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's so hard on small businesses, you know, to have the spare resource, the spare time, the spare expertise, you know, all the things that impact on a little business, we've got to release them so they are able to take a meaningful part in this collaboration as well.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: They've got to be a part of it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's such an important point, Nick.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if we design something with a view to SMEs getting involved, it's gonna work for everyone.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: If we design something with a view to big businesses getting involved, it's not always gonna work for SMEs.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we've learned that lesson over the year in terms of apprenticeships as well.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um now, Beryl, tell us a little bit about what we can expect to see during um National Work Experience Month.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Work Experience Month is about actually celebrating best practice.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So from all the corners of Great Britain, we're going to have demonstrations of what good looks like.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've also launched a poster campaign for young people to be able to say what they thought were meaningful.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we've started it off um with a young man you already know that came to London with me and is now in a brilliant place, and he's been the poster boy, if you want to call it for this, to say what work experience has done for his life.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really overwhelmed and excited about this because what we want to do this time is encourage young people to put the good, the bad, the ugly to say what looks good.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're quite excited because young people are powerful, and if a young person's been in a meaningful placement and it's done something for that young person, we need to celebrate that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And within that month, we'll be celebrating placements of all sorts across the country of what is meaningful and looks good to young people, and I'm really excited about that.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll have businesses on board, hopefully, that will encourage other businesses on board, lots of SMEs showing other SMEs what's doable, what's possible.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we've had events where we've brought Crime Prosecution Service, Amazon, we've brought big players, we've brought small players, and the contribution is enormous across the board.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just because it's an SME doesn't mean the contribution isn't huge.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to demonstrate that so that schools, educationalists, young people, and the business community choose whatever size can see exactly what can be done.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if we all unite, and that's what um you know, Association for Education Business Professionals have tried to do for the last few years, get everybody together and let's all pull in that direction.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that, Beryl.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's so important, and and it really strikes me that something that can be actually be quite small from an employer can have such an impact on young people.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Often when we talk to young people in their 20s or 30s and ask them like, what do they remember from school, what stands out from school, it's often a visit to a workplace or an opportunity to speak to an employer, and that might be quite an average week for the employer, but for the young person, that's been absolutely life-changing in terms of what they what they want to do.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: That can be a very powerful message to businesses that it's about kind of developing their future workforce, but also this can be life-changing for young people too.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It can, it can.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also there is an enjoyable part to it because as an employer, you know, we're not a large employer.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you get a young person in, it brings a breath of fresh air into the workplace, you know, it lifts the staff.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've just employed somebody on the back of that, somebody that's never been in a workplace, but that realized that they needed some work experience.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this young lady told me what she could do for our company.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: She's now starting with us at the end of July.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: What a nice, nice story, right on home territory.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: So as we come to the end of our time together, um, I just wanted to ask you both if an employer were kind of thinking about getting involved, thinking about offering a placement during work experience month, what would you say to them to try and just help them to get over the line?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um Nick, what would your what would your point be?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, you're not alone, right?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, we we learn by working with others that know more.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love learning from people, you know.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: If I don't learn something new every day, you know, I'm living waste in away.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: So look, we can all learn from each other.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So first thing I say is we've got a website, wexmonth.co.uk.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can go on there if you're an employer and actually just register because I think the main thing is about networks, yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: We link people into networks where there's more knowledge and more learning.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that would be the first step.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Look, you're not alone.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Go on to the website, actually fill in and send an email to us.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: We will link you to your regional EVP.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the, you know, kind of the first the first steps.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's about networks, it's about helping people along the journey.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Better to take one small step than this giant leap and go down a hole, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then think that was a really bad idea.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do that ever again.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I would say.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Look, we are there to help.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever the issue, whatever the ask, whatever the question, drop us a line through the through the website.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant and love that.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Nick, holding hands to get there together.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Beryl, what would you say to that that business to help them get over the line?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would say when was the last time you actually worked with young people?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're in an age where technology, everything is moving dramatically.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, you need a 10-year-old, you need somebody young with a mind that's fresh, and the dynamic it can bring into your workplace is incredible.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Beryl.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, really, really good to talk to you about this.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's really clear in my mind the the kind of importance that work experience can have for young people, but also the positive experience it can be for a business as well.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think work experience at the month in July is going to have such a positive impact, sharing some of those stories from all around the country, as you say, Beryl, showing the impact that it can make.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and really the kind of prize is, as you say, Nick, social equality, reducing need, helping to drive growth, all of those things that we've been looking for.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much for being the driving force behind setting this up.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um thank you, Nick.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Beryl.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: This podcast was produced by the Edge Foundation.