The Quality of Work YEG Subgroup met recently to discuss Creating Opportunity. Our definition of Creating opportunity is to provide opportunities for young people to gain the skills and experiences they need, through meaningful and good quality experiences of the world of work that raise their aspirations, skills and personal networks.
Catch 22 – Creating Opportunities Programme
During our meeting, we heard from Shahid Khan from Catch 22 who spoke about their Creating Opportunities Forum Programme. This programme provides tailored one to one support for young people to help them find training, apprenticeships and employment. An important element of the programme is the wrap around support provided for its young people which seeks to address the various barriers they face when looking for work, these included things such as providing laptops to ensure young people can apply for opportunities online and help with housing applications, amongst many others. Speaking about the important of the programme, Shahid Khan said, “it is through interventions like this we can identify the barriers and needs of young people.”
Once young people are in their destination the programme provides support for a further six months and this can include help with a bus pass or financial support. This can be crucial for young people in the first few months of a new job to ensure they stay in employment and have the opportunity to build their confidence in their new roles.
An Employer’s Perspective – How Sodexo is creating opportunity
Clare Johnson, Early Careers Lead at Sodexo, a leading catering and facilities management company, shared with the group the practices they have put in to place. Sodexo are currently achieving this by ensuring young people have access to work experience, apprenticeships, training, taster days. Clare shared with the group the significance of taster days providing a recent example at St Luke’s Community Centre in London, where young people were invited to join cooking classes and develop their understanding of the roles avaliable. Clare said that these events allowed young people, who may not have a CV or the confidence to apply through formal channels for a job, were able to demonstrate their employability skills through their actions. As a consequence of the taster days Sodexo hired half of the young people who attended, with a focus on their attitude, communication skills and approach to work rather than formal qualifications or formal applications.
Sodexo also offers on-going support in the early stages of a young person’s career to assist with the transition from education to the workplace and ensure each young person is able to make the most of the opportunity presented. Sodexo have reached 245 young people so far at experience days, careers talks and mentoring and almost half of the venues have been located in social mobility cold spots. As part of their Creating Opportunity strategy Sodexo have also made a commitment to offer 50 paid internships to black graduates in 2023 to ensure that opportunities reach divesre talent.
A Young Person’s Perspective
Our final speaker was Georgia who is currently doing a Level 3 Appreticeship in Digital Marketing. She sharex her experience of having an employer create opportunity for her which helped to develop her skills and experience. An important part of Georgia’s journey to work was having access to work experience which she says, “was really helpful, especially with my confidence and my attitude towards the workplace.” As a result of her work experience Georgia was offered a full-time apprenticeships role with her employer. Reflecting on the support she receives in work, Georgia said, “my line manager is really proactive about us learning new skills and doing new things. There is always an opportunity to build soft skills such as communication skills, I attended an apprenticeship fair and I have been up to Blackpool and met with an employer at their head office. Getting that hands on experience is so important.” Georgia’s experience shows the power of creating opportunity for young people both pre-employment but also whilst on the job, the opportunity to develop new skill sets and have new experiences are all important parts of ensuring a young person is supported to become successful.
Why was the YEG set up?
In 2020, in response to the crisis and its impact on young people, Impetus, Youth Futures Foundation, Youth Employment UK, the Institute for Employment Studies, the Learning & Work Institute and The Prince’s Trust formed the Youth Employment Group (YEG) to bring together the youth employment sector to help drive the UK’s response. Now with over 300 member organisations, our coalition advocates for full and inclusive employment for young people.
Young people were hit first and hardest in the labour market by this pandemic and, despite rapidly moving into work as the economy reopened, the recovery has not been equal for all young people.
