PeoplePlus, the employment support and training services company, has released a new website, Feed the Nation, connecting those from industries laying off their workforce, who are seeking work, with employers who need to recruit quickly. Free online bridging programmes are available for individuals who will benefit from a two-day transition session before entering their new industry sector. We will ensure that the individual receives the right sector-specific job training as well as coaching in resilience and personal and financial wellbeing; setting them up to feel confident about working in a new industry and to perform well in their new roles.

As the British hospitality trade faces unprecedented challenges from the impact of COVID-19, Diageo is supporting the industry with £1million from Guinness for bartenders. It is also supporting small businesses by lowering minimum order quantities, providing complementary training and making online learning available for anyone in the drinks trade. Click here for more detail.

For businesses who need to recruit quickly Babington, the professional training course, apprenticeships and traineeships provider, is providing free online employability courses for unemployed people who have applied to job advertisements but are not yet ready to take-up opportunities. This is a great way to maximise the response to advertisements and support recruitment targets. To support those who are self-isolating or unable to attend their workplace at present, Babington is offering 25% off some of its online courses (see below). Additionally, free online courses in English and maths are available.

Further information can be provided by Mark Gilbert, head of employer delivery at Babington. mark.gilbert@babington.co.uk

Moverment to Work’s Employability Skills Curriculum  (ESC), by Accenture, helps develop the skills and confidence of people seeking employment. It includes the Skills to Succeed Academy (accessed with the code MTW123), which enables young people to build the core ‘soft’ and practical employability skills to succeed in work.  It also includes the Digital Skills Programme, seven digital skills courses that develop digital confidence and knowledge.

We want to share an exclusive 30% discount on all marketing and recruitment work for our members from our partners The Talent People (also known as GetMyFirstJob).

Some of you may already know The Talent People as the social enterprise behind our job search function or Talent Platform. We’ve advertised over 2,500 work experience opportunities through the platform in 2019. Please speak with Matt to make sure your work experience opportunities go on the platform in 2020.

For any employers recruiting young people into their workforce, The Talent People offers the number one pool of engaged candidates. Their job platform:

● Receives 1.2m visits per year
● Over 495,000 registered candidates
● Connects with 244,000 active email users
● Accepts 17,000 applications each month

The Talent People can offer a special discount to Movement to Work members across all their recruitment and marketing services. You can read more about this offer here:

Marketing Service Pack MtW Edition

Talentportal Pack MTW Edition

Please reach out to David Allison or Jenny Dallas at The Talent People if you’d like to discuss taking advantage of this offer.

 

Hello again,

Core to Movement to Work is the belief that it’s through collaboration we can have the most impact.  Each employer, charity and training provider makes a positive impact, but working together we can systematically make a bigger impact for the young people we support.  Those stuck in the “no experience, no job” cycle who don’t have the support network.  There is a lot of great work out there but it’s being done in silos, the interconnectivity is poor and therefore the experience for mentors and young people is extremely confusing.

I think it is all of our responsibility to address that and at Movement to Work we are putting our efforts in this space.  The work we are doing with the Inclusive Economy Partnership, West Midlands Combined Authority, DWP and many other organisations is all about connecting the ecosystem on a systemic and human level.  We’ve made great progress with over 1000 placements pledged, nearly 500 commenced and we’re tracking well on outcomes.  However this takes resource, we must all invest time and money to make this work and not much commissioning is pointed in this direction.

That said, with the right resource in place there is a lot we can do. We can create sector talent pipelines, we can run cross sector programmes, we can ensure that the ecosystem is in place to support those who aren’t successful first time, so that they all continue to move in a positive direction.  All of these are things we have ambition to do, or have started to implement across the Movement to Work network.

On this point of collaboration I want to call out a programme that BT piloted in the West Midlands and have just completed in London. They brought all of their expertise (and funding) to the mentoring, digital skills and employability support for the candidates. But crucially they worked with a number of employers to provide variety in the work placement offer and then at the end of the programme invited multiple employers as diverse as Accenture, Diageo, BUPA, Morgan Sindall and the Civil Service to a recruitment fair and celebration event giving the young people multiple routes to employment.  It is this sort of collaboration that can make a difference to individuals and ensure a better outcome for every young person we invest in.

As we move forward we are keen to take the premise of this model and work with many more of you on collaborative programmes.  We are looking to invest more time to evolve our work in the West Midlands and also kick off some work in the North East and North West. Please get in touch it you’d like to know more.

James Ashall, CEO Movement to Work

GCSE results day recently passed and with it will came stories of joy as other students go onto ‘A’ levels, apprenticeships and other opportunities. But what about those who didn’t do so well? Many will be completely disheartened and imagine a life without work or unfulfilling, low-paid roles. But it needn’t be like that, some would argue that the resilience they learnt from this early set back has set them well for the future.

It’s pretty well recognised now that some people are suited to academic education, whilst many are more practically oriented. And that’s not to do with intelligence or dedication; Lord Sugar built a business empire based on one ‘O’ level (GCSE equivalent until the 80s). And Simon Cowell has helped build the careers of stars worldwide, also based on one ‘O’ level. And there are some arguably bigger stars described below.

Movement to Work helps support young people who have been unemployed and out of education for a long period, and many of these people didn’t get on with GCSEs. This could be for any number of reasons including the way that schools teach, illness, family situations and other environmental issues. We work with employers to encourage them to provide work placements and other job opportunities, and this gives those without paper qualifications a chance to shine and have their incredible potential unlocked.

 

Lee Mallia, physiotherapy assistant

Lee Mallia, from Leeds, wants to be a physiotherapist and initially thought his lack of GCSEs and muscular dystrophy would hold him back. One of his friends worked for the NHS and told him that apprenticeships were available. This appealed to Lee because qualifications and weren’t needed by the NHS for an entry level apprenticeship.

Lee worked as a clinical support worker, helping look after patients. He tended to their general needs, helped them move around and regularly turned the patients at risk of developing pressure sores. He carried out clinical observations too, such as patients’ temperature and blood pressure, checking cannulations and blood sugar checks before mealtimes for patients who are diabetic.

Lee said: “If patients asked for help moving around, I encouraged them to be independent and to do it themselves first. I think being disabled myself helps us both.

“The best bit of the job was getting to know the patients on the ward as individuals. Depending on where you work, you look after quite a few elderly patients who often have a lot of stories to tell. I know I made a difference just by listening and getting to know them. The biggest challenge was not getting too attached to the patients. Obviously not everybody gets to go home from the ward so that can be tough, but it’s part of the job and a hospital counselling service is available if things got too much. I’ve worked on the ward a year now and still find it difficult losing someone, especially if I’ve got to know them. But I’m told it gets easier over time.”

Lee’s ambition is to become a physiotherapist. His apprenticeship qualification and experience of working with people in clinical support has helped him get a physiotherapy assistant job and put him on the path to his dream of becoming a physiotherapist.

Lee said: “An apprenticeship in health is definitely worth the experience. If you have qualifications already but need experience, it’s a way to do that and, if you don’t have any, it’s a way to get some. An apprenticeship is ideal for people like me.”

 

Angela Peacock, chief executive

Angela owns and runs a global multi-£million diversity and inclusion consultancy, PDT Global, which enables some of the world’s largest corporations to create inclusive workplaces. Angela left school at 16 with a CSE in drama and an ‘O’ level in English literature. “I was amazed I got those,” said Angela, “I was bullied so badly that I rarely went to school.” My final school report said: “Angela produces some excellent work on the rare occasions she’s here.”

Angela was very bright but her intelligence was devoted to avoiding bullies and convincing her parents she was at school. She said she wasn’t surprised that she only passed those two exams: “Those were the only ones I turned up for,” she said. “In my family and in much of society then girls weren’t seen as ‘breadwinners’ and any old job would do, as long as they were at work. I ended up selling advertising on the phone at 16, the only female in that company doing so.”

Angela said that she felt resentful of the school system and angry with herself. She knew she could have passed all her exams had she felt able to go to school. She started a number of small businesses, including a florist and a cake-icing firm. At 19 she was running an employment agency in the City of London.

After getting married Angela stayed at home to look after her new baby. At 34 she attended an adult-learning course where she found herself presenting on how to ice a chocolate mouse. One of the other attendees stopped her, saying that she couldn’t bear to see Angela wasting her talent. The two of them ended up starting up a training company, which became PDT Global.

Angela said that self-belief is key when facing a knock-back like failing your GCSEs. “Learn anything you can that’s useful and keep moving up a gear. Recognise that you feel vulnerable but find your self-confidence in your ability to learn. Build your ambitions and with that comes resilience. Take risks and be prepared to get it wrong, for people like me and the new ‘GCSE by-passers’ we’ve not a lot to lose like dropping out of a university course or some massive job that might not suit, so in a way we have an advantage.

“Qualifications only give you ‘permission’ to get on. You have that permission anyway, millions succeed without them.”

 

William Kettle, Apprentice Office Assistant

William, 24, works at the learning disability charity Mencap and has a learning disability. Last year, he completed a traineeship and apprenticeship as part of Mencap’s 3 Ships employment programmes, which comprise supported internships, traineeships and apprenticeships to support people with a learning disability to develop the skills and confidence needed to get a job. The programme helped William build his confidence and secure his first job.

William said: “I have a learning disability and I left school with the best GCSEs result that I could and felt proud of what I achieved. I passed my BTEC in Performing Arts by playing King Lear’s good daughter Cordelia and really enjoyed it. I went on to college where I studied level 2 media, level 2 travel/tourism and life skills. I went on to do a nine-month long internship at my local council. But it was taking part in Mencap’s traineeship and then apprenticeship employment programmes which really turned my career around. It helped me learn how to write emails, develop my admin skills and improve my employability skills, like writing a CV and doing interviews, to get me ready for work.

“Most importantly, the travel support helped me build up my confidence to travel independently, which means I can now get to work all by myself. After finishing the programme, I got my first job as Apprentice Office Assistant at Mencap. Now I know that it doesn’t matter what grades you get at school, with the right support and training opportunities, like Mencap’s 3 Ships programmes, people with a learning disability can get into work. I want the government to make training opportunities like apprenticeships more accessible for people, like me, who have a learning disability. People with a learning disability make great employees, we just need to make sure there is the support in place they need to get them into work.”

 

What you can do!

If you’re disappointed in your GCSE results, speak to your teachers, they will have seen this situation many times before. They’ll be able to advise you on your options, whether that’s appealing your grades, resitting your exam, college, an apprenticeship, traineeship/employability scheme or something else.

Or If you have a specific career in mind, research all the possible ways you could achieve it: work experience, volunteering, apprenticeships, professional courses (which often have no entry requirements), access courses and entry-level roles are all possible routes.

If you’re not sure what you’d like to do, research different careers, jobs that sound dull at first can be fascinating once you know what they’re really like. List your strengths and try to match them up to potential careers. Speak to everyone you know. See what they suggest and what they think you would be good at.

Consider an apprenticeship. If you want to get a head start in the workplace, apprenticeships are the way to go. They allow you to get a job and earn money while studying professional qualifications that give you practical skills. Apprenticeships aren’t just for manual jobs. There are apprenticeships for accountancy, HR, management and more. Some apprenticeships don’t require GCSEs and some you can access via traineeship schemes.

Don’t rule out careers based on assumptions or stereotypes. Many jobs are a stepping stone to something else, even if you don’t know what that will be yet. There’s no ‘right’ way to start your career and many people find their passion whilst doing something else or by taking a more unconventional route. There are a huge number of enjoyable careers out there, and many don’t require any GCSEs at all. Go out and find them!

Missing out of the GCSE grades you wanted isn’t the end of your ambitions, but the beginning of a new plan. You have your whole life to build a career you love.

At the end of June, 140 people from 80+ organisations came together at Centrica’s Leicester offices to discuss the ways we can support young people overcoming barriers to work.  Debbie Gordon – Head of Partnership Delivery at Movement to Work shares her thoughts following the event. It was a delight to join not my first, but second conference since being seconded to Movement to Work in December 2017 from Centrica. The event had brilliant guest speakers, the energy in the room was so positive and many new partnerships were forged.  We’ve tried our best to summarise it in some key messages below, but if you’d like to know more about what we do, or see a copy of the presentations shared during the conference, please get in touch with Rachel at Movement to Work who will be happy to support you. Just click HERE

Key facts and stats from our annual MtW conference June 2018:

• There are still 500,000 young people who are economically inactive.  James, our CEO, opened the event by sharing thoughts on the social mobility
  challenge we face and how we must all focus to support young people further from the labour market including those that are economically inactive.  Whilst youth unemployment has come down over the last five years, young people are still three-times more likely to be unemployed and little progress has been made to support those who are not at the Job Centre into the workplace.
• There are less opportunities for young people to find ways into work.  The data on Level 2 apprenticeships and work experience for young people who are NEET show a decline of 35%-53%
• Elaine Townshend from DWP, shared the latest employment statistics with us; we have record unemployment and record female employment.  The ONS stats show that there are over 800,000 job vacancies at any one time, yet we are still seeing young people at a disadvantage. Elaine called on all employers to explore how they can do more to support a more diverse set of young people from across society into work and specifically asked them all to become disability confident.
• Elisabeth Paulson from Impetus shared with us their brilliant Youth Jobs Gap analysis which has some startling take aways:
  • Disadvantaged Young People are twice as likely to be unemployed as their better off peers and this employment gap is consistent over time.
  • While half this gap can be explained by differences in qualification, half cannot.
  • Higher levels of qualifications are associated with lower NEET rates …and the proportion of low qualified young people who are NEET has barely changed in recent years, even though the proportion of young people with low qualification has fallen.
  • At all levels of qualification, disadvantaged young people are more likely to be NEET than their better off peers with similar qualifications.

• Catherine Sezen from Association of Colleges shared with us the work they are doing and talked about the opportunity to collaborate to support those learners who are struggling to find alternative ways into employment and in-work learning.
• Finally, Linsay McCulloch from Mencap shared with us the challenges that face those with alearning disability; heart-breakingly 65% of them can and want to work and only 6% do. Linsay helped to bust some of the myths around supporting people with a learning disability into work as well as sharing the economic and social benefit and also offered Mencap’s support to any organisations who would like to do more in this space.

We were also lucky enough to be inspired by Ian ‘Woody’ Woodhouse from Enthuse International Ltd, who encouraged all attendees to make sure they themselves were fuelled for the journey ahead, as well as moving us to think creatively and to try and see situations from different perspectives.

Outside of the formal session, the space was arranged into over 20 stalls manned by training providers and youth outreach organisations, with attendees free to network to discuss topics of interest. We also had demonstrations on the use of the MtW Talent Portal by Get My First Job, the MtW Communications Platform by Meet and Engage, and Accenture’s Employability Skills Curriculum.  

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone for their support on the day and we’re sure that many more conversations are happening that can help thousands more young people across our network.  If you haven’t already, please share your experiences on your social media channels, and make sure to tag @movementtowork and use the hashtags #YoungPeopleWork and #MtWConf2019. Please follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

Thank you once again for your ongoing support and, in a challenging political environment with much uncertainty, our role in collectively supporting unemployed young people is more vital than ever.  The uncertainty is clearly affecting young people’s happiness and confidence – the 2019 Prince’s Trust Ebay Youth Index (a national survey that gauges young people’s happiness and confidence across a range of areas from their working life to physical and mental health) found the overall Index score has flat-lined at its lowest level in a decade at 69.

On top of this, social mobility is a real challenge, as young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds do not have the same access to opportunity. The recent Impetus report showed that disadvantaged young people are twice as likely to be NEET as their better-off peers, and this correlation remains consistent across all levels of qualification.  Additionally,  the Social Mobility Commission’s report talked about the two-tier apprenticeship system with the lack of access across society to good quality apprenticeships, meaning that “those from lower socio-economic backgrounds are clustered in lower-returning and lower level apprenticeships, and are thus not benefitting as much as their affluent peers”. When you combine this with a 35% drop in placement availability and a 53% drop in Level 2 Apprenticeships across the UK, you uncover  a challenging landscape for unemployed young people.

As I said in my opening, the work we are doing is more important now than ever and we should be proud of the positive impact we are implementing.  The number of opportunities we created increased by 5% in 2018, with over 13,000 young people supported and over 55% of those completing placements going onto jobs or back into education. However, there is a large  opportunity set out there and we can and must do more

We’re focussing our energy on ensuring what we do has the maximum impact on social mobility. We are pushing  to make our opportunities more accessible for all, through our talent platform. We want to ensure that we are reaching into the right communities across the UK by continuing to build on our network of over 30 brilliant youth outreach and training providers, as well as making connections with local and regional authorities like  we have in the West Midlands.  By innovating to create the right offering of support for young people,  we are must ensuring that every young person we interact with moves onto a positive pathway. Supporting all of this is driving the policy changes needed to unlock funding for the youth sector.

Better connectivity, visibility and accessibility will help drive some of this change, but it will also take our focus, energy and desire to ensure that every opportunity we create can be made available to those young people most in need of our support.  It’s core to our collective mission and we are dedicated to supporting you in this.

Finally, I’d love to finish on a note of celebration. Our Social Mobility Awards are open and we’d encourage early nominations. The shortlist of nominees will be invited to parliament for our Youth Summit event in early November, with the Awards Ceremony at our Annual Celebration Event on the Tuesday 4 February 2020.

Thanks again everyone.

With a heavy heart my secondment to Movement to Work, leading our West Midlands Pilot alongside Rory Allbutt, has drawn to a close. The past six months have been a brilliant experience and it has been fantastic to be part of a collective Movement to help to change the lives of hundreds of young people in the West Midlands. In collaboration with West Midlands Combined Authority, DWP and our dedicated members across Movement to Work, we have made over 1,000 placements available for young people across 2019/20.

As I reflect on the first half of 2019 and Movement to Work looks to the next target region, here are some of my reflections on the lessons learned from working regionally:

• We are greater than the sum of our parts.
• Collaboration is critical to increasing our impact at the local level and our success in the West Midlands has only been made possible through the shared mission of local government, central government, employers, youth outreach organisations and training providers to improve the life chances of young people in the region.
• The fantastic launch event hosted by Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands, at the Prince’s Trust in Birmingham was a brilliant way to celebrate employers commitments and recruit new members.
• Our new youth-focussed working group convening every fortnight is helping to translate this commitment into action. In this group, WMCA, DWP (including work coach and progression coach representatives), youth outreach and programme managers from a variety of employers come together and we think this will prove key in tackling localised challenges to close the gap between supply and demand for opportunities.
• A local lens brings new insight.
• A data-driven approach has helped to understand the specific challenges facing young people in the region and has shaped our offering to young people. For example, we have seen that the majority of the 14,000 unemployed young people in the region are cycling into and out of employment, so we have taken steps to create more sustainable positive outcomes.
• We have also worked with employers to unlock regional barriers such as transport to open up new opportunities for young people.
• Mentors are key to transforming individual experience.
• We can galvanise wraparound support for young people through local interventions and new forms of mentors, from progression coaches to Youth Promise Plus and hands-on support for employers running work placements in the West Midlands.
• Progression coaches are a carefully selected group of 10 JobCentre Plus work coaches in 5 wards facing the most significant youth employment challenges. Progression coaches have a reduced case load (40% of an average work coach case load), enabling them to provide more intensive support throughout a young person’s journey to employment. The results of this new model have been  remarkable, with 96% of progression coach customers staying in work when they find it.
• Youth Promise Plus is a collaboration across Birmingham and Solihull Councils, WMCA, Prince’s Trust, University Hospital Birmingham and the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner provides holistic personal support for tailored mentoring and specialist coaching and pathway training. This programme also helps employers to shape work environments suited to young people’s needs to ensure sustainable outcomes.
• Innovation and commitment across our network is key. Our members have helped to increase the scale and diversify the opportunities available bringing Small & Medium Enterprises into the network, from M&S’s Plan A commitment to social impact across its supply chain to BT’s original approach to integrating SMEs and other employers through work experience and careers fairs.

Thanks to all who have been part of this incredible journey – your efforts have been instrumental in amplifying our impact on the lives of young people in the West Midlands!

 

Keep in touch with Molly via LinkedIn.