Work Experience

Work experience gives school children experience of a real work environment for a short period of time - typically one or two weeks and usually this is for pupils who are studying GCSE or A-level subjects. Many companies offer placements in a variety of roles across the organisation, including administration, finance, laboratories, engineering shops and production areas.

This programme is an excellent way of helping young people to understand what the world of work is really about, see what is involved in the career that they are considering and helping them to develop confidence and improve their communication skills. For the business it is a way of helping to encourage pupils to make career choices that may make them part of your future workforce, remove some of the prejudices that young people may have about our sector, and supporting your local schools. In some cases the pupil may be the son or daughter of an employee and it can then be a way of being seen to be a way of supporting your employees too.

In some cases it is difficult for companies to place pupils in some production areas, but many companies have managed to find creative ways to provide pupils with an experience of the working environment whilst still allowing some, supervised, access to the production facilities.

Clearly, risk assessment is an important part of taking any young person into the workplace, including assessing the child protection issues that go alongside this.

If you are able to offer these programmes we can help you to find the right people to fill the places on them.

We can give advice on child protection issues and help you remove the need for your employees to be CRB checked.

To ensure that the student and your business both get the most out of the time together we suggest that you plan a day by day programme of activity for them, possibly showing them different roles that they have not yet considered as career options. Some companies find that by setting short projects in different areas and using a different supervisor each day maximises the enjoyment of the pupil while minimising the disruption to the business. This can also be a great motivator for employees too.

We would suggest some kind of assessment at the end of the time to check what the pupil has learned from the experience and also to gather feedback about the programme so that you can make changes to improve it for future years.

For older students, particularly those at university, a placement scheme may be more beneficial - more information is available on the Placement section of our website.

NEPIC is happy to help if you wish to set up a programme for your local pupils. Please contact us at enquiries@nepic.co.uk.