Category: News

Movement To Work’s Response

The team is working from home and is in good health.

Despite having had to postpone our Leadership Forum and North East launch event in Newcastle earlier in March, our new team member Chris Gallon, seconded from Sage, is pushing ahead with our local youth-employment programme in the North East and has made some great contacts and good progress.

Simon Beckman seconded from Unilever, is another new team member and will be leading Movement to Work programmes in the North West. Simon has already begun work with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and is driving forward some great partnerships working with our Partner Network. If you can make any introductions for Chris or Simon, please click on their names above and drop them a line.

We recently welcomed Sam Olsen as the new CEO of Movement to Work.  As many of you know, Sam is on secondment to us from the Department for Education (DfE), the government department responsible not just for schools but also vulnerable children. Since the Coronavirus outbreak, DfE asked if Sam can temporarily return to her former role to help coordinate its response to the virus, to ensure we are protecting children in the care system during this period.

As a result, from Monday 23 March 2020, Sam will return to DfE and Dal Channa will temporarily step into the CEO position during this period. Dal, a senior manager at Accenture, had already begun her induction as the incoming COO for MtW.

Movement to Work is supporting employers with their continuity plans by communicating news of innovative support provided by our network of training providers, youth-outreach agencies and employer members. Many of MtW’s employer members are continuing to offer fantastic vocational and work experience opportunities, albeit some employability schemes have had to be postponed.

Some industries’ workforces have been laid-off for the time being, whilst others need to ramp up employee numbers quickly. MtW is here to help and advise those involved in all industries and all circumstances.

Tesco to take on 20,000 temporary workers

As an example of industries that are booming and in need of extra support, supermarkets have gone on a hiring spree as demand surges as a result of the Coronavirus crisis. Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket, wants to take on 20,000 temporary workers “to help feed the nation”, it said. They’re not alone,  Asda, Aldi, and Lidl all said they would hire thousands of staff after hugely increased demand saw shoppers clearing shelves. In light of so many cuts and losses, Tesco has also stood out by offering a pay increase – a 10% bonus to its workers in stores, distribution centres and customer engagement centres across the country. Read more about the ‘feed the nation’ initiative here in light of Competition laws relaxed to allow supermarkets to work together on Coronavirus response.

Qube Vision offers free programmes and courses

In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, Qube Vision would like to offer their support to all individuals and businesses. Qube Vision, the vocational courses and e-learning specialist,  is offering all individuals and businesses, especially those who are now self-isolating, Qube Vision’s programmes. Courses are free to enrol upon until the end of May 2020. We hope that this initiative will provide a great opportunity for many users to learn new skills and afford them a chance to focus on their own personal development. Visit Qube Vision to redeem this offer and enter the code ‘MTWVISION’ at the checkout from the 1st May.

PeoplePlus launch new website – Feed the Nation

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.

Diaego’s Support

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.

Babington’s Online Employability Courses

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

Accenture’s Employability Skills Curriculum

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.

Recruitment and Marketing Offer from The Talent People

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.

 

Impact through collaboration

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 PartnershipWest 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

Poor GCSE results can lead to greater ambitions!

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.