At Youth Employment UK we know that employers do a lot for young people. We work with employers of all sizes, in all sectors, who are committed to creating a youth friendly environment. These organisations are developing quality, youth friendly opportunities for young people at all stages of their education to employment journey.
There are three categories that these activities fall into:
Explore – what organisations do to engage and support young people before they make career decisions
Experience – what organisations do to support young people to have meaningful experiences in their business
Employment – what entry roles organisations have to support young people into careers in their business (entry level, apprenticeships, graduate employment etc)
For young people each of these areas are critically important. Being able to support young people to explore careers whether that be part of early careers or through other access points after school helps young people to understand the world of work and the careers that exist. Work experience allows young people real experience of the world of work and lets them test their skills and fair access to entry level roles is the first step to developing meaningful careers.
Creating a youth employment strategy :
The quality of all of these opportunities is key for both the young person and the employer. Youth employment is more than just a good thing to do, it’s an investment by an employer that can see returns far beyond the investment made – if it is done well. Creating good quality opportunities takes time, investment and staff capacity especially in its infancy; having a clear youth employment strategy is vital.
A youth employment strategy can help you ensure that you are setting out your plans alongside and integrated into your business objectives. A strategy is a working document, regularly reviewed with accountabilities for all involved.
Our expertise in working with all stakeholders, including young people gives us a unique perspective from which we can provide expert support and advice to help organisations build, shape and develop their youth employment strategy.
Top tips
To help you start thinking about a youth employment strategy:
- Understand what the business needs: closing skills gap, capitalising on the levy, increasing diversity and inclusion, building the brand, ageing workforce. Ensure that your youth employment strategy recognises and supports the business needs – that’s where your return on investment will be found.
- Commit to quality first: building a good strategy and good opportunities takes time, it takes longer if you don’t get the quality right. Quantity can have a role to play of course, but without getting the quality right scaling will cause problems.
- Identify what quality measures you already have and what you will need: We have created the Youth Friendly Employer Framework as a way to measure and evidence the quality of your youth employment programmes.
- Build a team: no one person can be responsible for the youth employment strategy, ensure you have a senior leader, operational staff, line managers and young people represented in your team to help develop and champion the strategy
- Get expert help, a lot has changed over the last couple of years in the youth employment space, there are key organisations you will need to connect with to support your explore, experience or employment programmes so make sure you are connected to the right experts.
- Review the strategy with young people, make sure you consult with as many young people as possible along the way and once the strategy is developed make sure you keep checking in with this key stakeholder group
Want to know more?
Youth Employment UK CEO, Laura-Jane Rawlings has created a webinar on developing a youth employment strategy, please follow the link below.
Watch the webinar