There are many benefits to work experience, yet the opportunities are lacking. Charlotte Dudley at Connectr Early Engagement offers a solution.

The Connectr Early Engagement pulse survey 2024 explores the gap between employers and educators.

We canvassed our network of teachers and career leads across more than 20 UK schools and colleges and more than 40 employers to gather qualitative and quantitative data. Our analysis captures the 2024 career engagement young people access, the impact it’s having on them and the skills this generation lack.

Five themes came out of the data:

1. In-person work experience is an important form of intervention for both educators and employers
2. Both educators and employers are embracing the return of face-to-face interventions post-Covid
3. Careers intervention is still focused on older secondary school children (years 10 – 13)
4. Employers are noticing key skills gaps which can be improved by early intervention
5. Content and facilitation are the two most important aspects impacting overall intervention quality.

A theme close to my heart is the importance of in-person interventions, specifically in-person work experience, where the gap between impact and frequency of offering is striking.

The work experience gap

Employers and educators alike rated in-person work experience as the most impactful intervention – employers for meeting their hiring and/or social impact objectives, and educators for impact on their students.

Schools reported it as the number one request they made to employers, believing it to be the route delivering the greatest impact to their students: 90% of educators put in-person work experience in their top two activities for student impact.

However, educators also told us that work experience isn’t the most frequent offering they see from employers, with a quarter of respondents ranking it as the option they get offered least.

Impact of work experience

For employers, a positive impact was around enabling them to reach their objectives, which is unique to each company and each individual:

• For early careers and resourcing teams, this might be about pipelining more underrepresented talent into apprenticeship roles, or supporting lower socio-economic students onto a pre-employment programme.
• For those in social impact/CSR roles, this might be about increasing a young person’s awareness of careers in the sector, or sparking an interest for female students to pursue a STEM career.

For educators, outcomes relate to the positive impact different interventions can have on students. For example, broadening horizons, challenging misconceptions about certain jobs and sectors, and showing different career pathways.

Importantly, work experience can also demonstrate that careers at the host organisations are for ‘people like me’. Exposure to ‘real’ workplaces is motivating for students – and means they are more comfortable in a professional environment before they begin their careers.

One of our educator respondents commented, “In person work experience has the most impact for students in terms of raising aspirations and allowing them to explore future career possibilities”

Why is there a gap?

Given the mutual benefits, why is there a gap between high demand from schools for work experience and insufficient opportunities from employers?

Employers commonly recited resource restrictions including:

• Lack of office space that can accommodate a group of students across three days or a full week.
• Too few volunteers, especially those who are confident and willing to facilitate sessions.
• Resource to provide lunch and travel so students can attend, which is particularly essential for students from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds.

Sector collaboration as a solution

Sector collaboration is one solution to overcoming the challenges or organising work experience. Our Discover Finance initiative included ISE members with three financial services firms coming together across two regions to offer 45 students a ‘rotational work experience’.

Students were hosted by a different firm each day. This approach is particularly valuable as students can see multiple employers, providing a more rounded understanding of a sector and better equipping them to navigate into the right role and company.

Being creative, collaborative and innovative on how to deliver work experience can make it more attainable for employers:

• Only hosting for a single day relieves pressure on office space.
• Facilitated by Connectr, volunteers can drop in, such as joining a panel discussion, making volunteering more accessible for different personality types and confidence levels.
• Lower level of travel/sustenance support, keeping costs lower, and making high-quality work experience provision easier to access, especially for smaller firms.

Discover Finance is also a forum to share experiences. Founding member Aon openly shared how they set up and run their Work Insights Programme, which targets social mobility and has seen around 1,500 Y12-13s engaged in 2023-24. Read How Aon reinvented work experience to engage disadvantaged young people.

Beth Wistow, People Advisor at LGPS Central and a Discover Finance host company said, “Improving social mobility within the financial services sector is something that no single firm can do alone, so collaboration across organisations is key to driving meaningful impact.

“This is just one of the reasons that LGPS Central signed up as a Founding Member to Discover Finance; a multi-firm, rotational work experience for students aged 16-18. As well as the impact it had on the students who attended, it was a lighter-touch way for us to run a work experience programme; we hosted the students for just one day, before they moved onto the next firm – and it was easy for volunteers from LGPS Central to engage with the programme, assisted by facilitation from Connectr.”

Collaboration not only makes it easier for employers to host students, it also provides more valuable work experience opportunities for young people.

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