The Work Inspiration campaign mobilises businesses to turn work experience into work inspiration, to bridge the gap that exists between the classroom and the world of work.
The campaign began on September 15th 2009, when Sir Stuart Rose, the Chairman of Business in the Community (BITC), launched a national call to action to improve work experience for young people.
This formed the start of a national business-led movement — business talking to business across the country to improve the work experience they offer — convened and supported by BITC. The goal is to improve work experience for the 500,000 students entering placements in June 2010.
Work Inspiration addresses two critical needs:
- the business need for employable recruits, the standard of which is improved by engaging earlier with the future workforce;
- the social need to provide young people with a clearer picture of work, to equip them to make decisions about their future career paths, and increase their employability.
To become a Work Inspiration Company you need to engage the whole organisation. To do that you need to share what the issues are and involve everyone in agreeing what should be done. To help you, we suggest running a Big Conversation.
How to have a Big Conversation
Why do we need to have a Big Conversation?
As employers we cannot pause, we must act now to prevent a lost generation of young people who do not understand the wide range of exciting and relevant opportunities that are out there for them in the corporate sector.
We must act faster and sooner, with greater scale and impetus than ever before. By becoming a Work Inspiration company you must first have a Big Conversation to mobilise your internal key stakeholders to turn work experience into work inspiration. We show you here how to kick-start this process:
Who shall I invite?
Everyone who is involved in programmes around the transition to the world of work. This doesn’t have to be just those in the HR or education functions, you could also include:
- Talent managers, or those whose role it is to nurture young talent
- Corporate responsibility practitioners
- Young people themselves ie: interns, apprentices, graduates
- Line mangers who proactively offer work experience regularly
- Mentors to young people or those who volunteer in their communities regularly
- Parents who show a proactive interest in work experience offered inhouse
How to host a Big Conversation?
This is not a meeting, or an agenda item, this is a purposeful mobilisation of your key internal stakeholders who can spearhead change and drive your organisation to become a Work Inspiration company. A suggested structure would look like this:
- Ensure you fully brief your colleagues beforehand so that they understand how they can add value
- Begin the meeting by presenting the video on our on our homepage, highlighting the key issues faced by the UK today
- Present the business case for your company, for example you could cover:
- do you know how many work placements you have per year
- where are we now and can we use this as a baseline for any future measuring of our successes
- is there a coherent strategy across the business functions and sites which offers young people a consistent experience and message when coming into your workplace
- are we doing enough right now
- could we do better, how
- Present the three Insights, detailed on the Big Conversation website which gives you three simple and easy ways of creating an inspirational workplace for the young people
- Get feedback and work up an action plan to change work experience into work inspiration
- Download the Work Inspiration logo here to show that you are a Work Inspiration company, showing leadership