Benefits to Employers
The work experience programme is designed to be beneficial to
all involved - Employers, Students and Schools.
The organisation and its employees
- Your company's image will be enhanced through supporting your local community, school
and young people.
- You will gain a better understanding of education, which will help you improve your
recruitment processes.
- Your employees' motivation can be improved e.g. personal satisfaction arising from
helping a local school and its students. Indeed the student may be a child of one
of your employees, or even your own!
- Opportunities for staff development can increase, as employees are given an opportunity
to develop new skills, and improve interpersonal skills in areas such as communication,
planning organisation and coaching, e.g. through the planning of the placement content
and supervision of the student.
- Contributing to developing skills in the next generation of the workforce - you
will contribute to more motivated, educated, trained and enterprising young people
- who may be approaching you for employment in the future!
Benefits to the local community
The largest benefit of the work experience programme is that you will be helping
school students from local schools in numerous ways:
- You will be helping young people to achieve a greater understanding of the world
of work, and of career opportunities available in the local labour market.
- You will be helping them to develop work-related skills generally, whilst giving
them specific experience of work in an occupational area in which they are interested.
This experience is extremely valuable to all Students - and some of the Students
going on work experience placements may be the children of your employees, or indeed
your own children!
Benefits to Students
Students find the work experience placements enjoyable, relevant
to school studies, and helpful for personal and vocational development. Indeed teachers
often comment on how more mature some of the Students had become after going on
work experience placements.
- Work Experience placements can show a young person the importance of personal qualities
and the dispositions needed in the workplace generally, and help them to develop
new skills, confidences and awareness. Indeed for some young people, this is the
first time they have experienced the world of work, and have been away from the
familiar school environment. Issues of finding out how to get to the employers premises,
dressing appropriately, getting there on time, interacting with adults they don't
know, and taking on new work tasks to develop these skills.
- A work experience placement also gives students an insight into specific occupational
areas, and can help young people to make realistic and informed decisions about
work, education and training - in that they get "real-life" experience in a job
/ career area in which they are interested. This can help them, for example, in
applying for jobs and college places, as the Student can talk from life experience
and be fully aware of the job requirements.
Academic Development
Whether the placement is in an occupational area of interest to the Student or
not, they will learn from the activities in which they are involved, and link them
to core skills which are built into the school curriculum:
- Core skills relating to the world of work
- Communication understanding and following written and verbal instructions
- Working with others, relating to others in the workplace, e.g. staff, customers
- people of all ages, people they never met before
- Numeracy, helping to check and order stock. Using measurement instruments ICT using
the Internet, CD-ROMs, the e-mail system and software packages; word processing;
preparing documents
- Problem Solving analyse the tasks to be carried out at work and plan how they can
be completed e.g. making travel arrangements for a meeting; prioritising your workload