
Scope
Having a clear scope will help you to plan and manage your workplace experiences effectively.
Find out why you should offer experiences of your workplace, how it raises your company profile and access guidance for working with schools and colleges.
Why offer experiences of the workplace?
You only have to look at the statistics to realise that experiences of the workplace are crucial for your future workforce. When deciding whether to commit to providing young people with work experience you should consider all the benefits they not only bring to the student, but also to your business.
- Employee engagement and development: employees can build on their supervisory and leadership skills whilst sharing their knowledge and expertise with young people.
- Insights into your business: understand how young people view your business.
- Access to skills: tap into the minds of digital natives.
- Build business-relevant skills in young people to support your recruitment strategy and develop your future workforce.
- Give back to your community and build relationships with schools and colleges.
- Raise a positive profile and bust myths about your business and industry.
- Embrace online delivery to enable more young people to gain valuable insights into careers and industry opportunities.
29% of employers say that having work experience is critical when recruiting young people, and a further 45% say it is significant
– UK Commission for Employment & Skills
Working with schools and colleges
Schools and colleges are working to help young people think about their future careers.
The Gatsby Benchmarks are a framework which make up the elements of an excellent careers programme. Gaining experiences of the workplace (Gatsby Benchmark 6) is one of the keys to success. By the age of 16, every pupil should have had at least one experience of the workplace.
Schools and colleges need your help to create these opportunities. Employers have a huge role to play in helping schools and colleges to meet Gatsby Benchmarks 2, 4, 5 and 6:
2: Learning from career and labour market information
4: Linking the curriculum to careers
5: Encounters with employers and employees
6: Experiences of the workplace
It’s important for employers to connect with local schools and colleges in order to offer experiences of the workplace. Providing activities and recordings encourages a two-way interaction between students and employers/employees. We pulled together lots of useful resources below to help with this.
When designing your programme it’s really important to consider the needs of the school or college. Meeting their needs and objectives will lead to a fuller experience for young people.
– Nicola Hall, Director of Education The CEC
What can you offer?
During the scoping stages, you should consider the various ways that you can carry out experiences of the workplace.
There are a number of other opportunities in addition to a work experience placement. They include:
- Work shadowing
- Work / site visits
- Insight days
- Mentoring
- Project-based learning
- Social action and volunteering
Whichever method you opt for, it’s important to ensure it is a meaningful and rich experience.
There are many ways to deliver an experience of the workplace for young people, in addition to a work experience placement. See here for inspiration on other ways you can provide a workplace experience.



Virtual Work Experience resources
Mayor of London | London Assembly
Explore the Mayor of London’s full range of downloadable resources made available to inspire the delivery of the experience of your workplace, including the construction and digital/technology sectors.