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Business called on to introduce world of work

Bdaily recently spoke to Newcastle Education Business Partnership’s (NEBP) Ambassadorfor Work scheme, to find out more about how businesses are helping young people to discover the world of work.

The scheme involves businesspeople on a voluntary basis, and engages them in mock interviews and “speed dating” events among other activities to provide children an insight into the work.

Sam Keith, Portfolio Delivery Manager at NEBP, said: “We bring employers into schools to interview students, and they then give them feedback. It’s about giving students a real experience with real business people.

“There’s also the skills side of the programme. We do activities around manufacturing for instance, like the “duck challenge” where students make paper ducks. This is all very fun of course, but it’s about promoting those core skills of team working and leadership, and so on. We get ambassadors in to either work with the teams, or to act in the role of banker, supplier etc.

“A lot of the activities we can run ourselves, but we like to involve the ambassadors where possible, as it gets the children used to meeting employers.”

The scheme is targeted at youngsters from the age of 4, up to 19, and aims to provide a window into work, to compliment careers advice provision.

Ambassadors receive training (half day), with reference to the national curriculum, what to expect in schools, what type of activities they can be involved in, and are then free to volunteer themselves for upcoming events.

Sam explains: “The benefit to the organisations is significant. Of course, there’s the corporate social responsibility angle, but there’s also staff development and promotion of thebusiness.

“To the ambassador, the experience of interviewing a 15/16 year old can really contribute to their ongoing professional development, and their own personal development. We have a lot of ambassadors who sign up because they have kids of that age and want to find out more about education, or perhaps they want to give something back to schools.”

NEBP are keen to attract a diverse pool of businesspeople for the ambassador scheme. Sam added: “ A lot of the current ambassador base are from office industries, particularly from firms such as PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, Optima Legal, Nexus and Newcastle City Council who are a fantastic support to NEBP but we would like to expand our baseto include people from health and social care, sport and active leisure, construction, recruitment and retail. We know its difficult for people to get out of these industries on a day-to-day basis, but we would be happy to see such people getting involved.“

Those who are interested in becoming involved with Ambassadors for Work should contact Sam Keith on 0191 277444, or via email: samantha.keith@newcastle.gov.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .