Investing in your future workforce - The Value of Work Placements for Employers

Work placements are a fantastic way of connecting employers with a diverse future talent pipeline, providing a unique opportunity to ease skills gaps and recruitment pressures whilst enabling school pupils to gain invaluable insights to the world of work.  

A significant volume of our DYW conversations with employers focus on talent and skills challenges of the organisation or sector, how there is a struggle with attracting the right applicants or competing against other organisations. This article explores a solution to this; getting involved in work placements for school pupils, the benefits are wide for all involved. 

For young people, a work placement can provide the influence and inspiration they need to determine whether a career path is the right one for them.  Pupils can explore how their subjects, interests, strengths, and skills relate to jobs and broader benefits include increased confidence, knowledge and social capital, which are essential for their next steps in life. Many of you, when reading this, can transport yourselves back to the work experience you had during your time at school and, whilst it may not have been recognised at the time, the value of this.  
 
For employers, getting involved in work placements also provides opportunities for existing staff to supervise and mentor young people, helping to develop their skills. Additionally, work placements allow organisations to give back to the community and enhance their profile as an employer of choice. 

Let’s focus in more on how work placements can help tackle recruitment and skills challenges.  If we start with working towards an inclusive and diverse workforce - many organisations offer work placements to those who are family members or friends' children, which can magnify a challenge with attracting and reaching diverse talent. By getting involved with specific schools or specific programmes, for example those focused on social mobility, employers can reach a diverse talent pool and utilise this to create a pathway to employment with their organisation.  According to research delivered by Education and Employers, work experience can be a very effective means of challenging social stereotypes about the realism of occupational ambitions.1 Work placements broaden young people’s horizons and create social capital, all which support young people with additional barriers to employment to progress positively after school.  

Challenges like an aging workforce, sector attractiveness and low volumes of applications, all resulting in recruitment and skills issues, can be tackled through work placements. Providing young people with the opportunity to experience your workplace, they become your advocates and share with peers the experience. Some workplaces have successfully utilised the work placement to deliver projects focused on attractiveness or improving recruitment processes; getting the voice and ideas of young people into the development of new and innovative ways to tackle issues can lead to successful change within an organisation.   
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A large proportion of work placements are self-found by pupils or family and friends of the pupil, something raised earlier. The additional challenge with this is that pupils are possibly not gaining exposure to the realities of demand in the labour market. Having more employers in demand sectors involved in work placements is a priority.  
   
With a business base of over 18,000 and only 1.4% of employers in the City of Edinburgh area offering work placements, we ask why more employers are not involved?  Let's tackle some of the queries we get from employers around work placements: 
  
Work placements for school pupils... 
are one weeklong – work placements can be anything from a day to a longer period, sometimes they run one day per week for a period too. There are different programmes employers can get involved in which meet their needs for time and resource requirement. So if you have a day or more time, you can get involved.  
take a long time to plan – it is important to have a plan, yet support is there to help with creating a plan and templates are available for what to do each day. Check out this from Siemens, which gives some examples on tasks that could be carried out.   
I need to complete so much paperwork – the health and safety of pupils when on work placement is vital, and there is some paperwork around this which shouldn’t take too long and some additional considerations, depending on the work placement type, on what you can offer for the young person to get involved in.  
I need special insurance – Under health and safety law, work experience students are your employees, like any other young person you employ. There are very few work activities a student cannot do because of health and safety law.  Your existing employers' liability insurance policy will cover work placements, provided your insurer is a member of the Association of British Insurers (ABI), or Lloyds, so there is no need for you to get any additional employer's liability insurance if you take on work experience students. The ABI website confirms this. Find out more HERE 
 
By creating structured opportunities for young people to gain real-life work experience, we can all be involved in bridging the gap between education and employment. This not only fosters a more inclusive and diverse workforce but also helps address sector-specific skills shortages. Employers stand to gain immensely by shaping the future talent pool, enhancing their reputation, and driving innovation through the fresh perspectives that young minds bring. Thus, embracing work placements is not just a corporate responsibility but a strategic investment in the future stability and growth of our industries. Let’s take collective action now to cultivate a dynamic and skilled workforce ready to meet the demands of tomorrow. Contact DYW Edinburgh, Midlothian & East Lothian to get involved today!​