'Fresh energy and fresh ideas' - why Swindon firms should embrace work experience
The Ink Monthly Business Focus
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This is our monthly ‘Business’ focus column which will normally appear on the first Thursday of every month. The second Thursday is ‘Education’, and the third Thursday of the month is ‘Heritage’, and the fourth Thursday is ‘Food & Drink’.
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Are you passing the ladder back down in your business?
Why it’s more important than ever to offer work experience
By business owner and journalist Fiona Scott
I’ve long been a believer in supporting those who are coming up a career ladder towards you. We need more people to be like this.
Work experience is just one tool which can help deal with the skills gap we are facing in Swindon and Wiltshire – we have to make our young people feel that they are valued, they are worth teaching and that they can learn. We need to do this more.
I work with a Wiltshire-based company, John Williams Heating Services, who have always valued young people. The team are celebrating 20 years this year and also their 20th apprentice.
Co-founder John Williams started his career as an apprentice and he and his wife Debbie are continually passing the ladder back down. They do this for the health of their own business and the health of their local business community in Chippenham. We need more of this.
When I worked full-time in television I often worked with young people who came on work experience at a time when it was so difficult to get through the doors of any broadcaster as a young person trying to find their way in the world.
Now it’s even more tricky. A close family friend has just secured a two-year apprenticeship with the BBC, one of many thousands who applied. We are so proud of him but what about the thousands of talented people who didn’t make that cut?
Even when I worked in newspapers in Swindon and in Somerset before that, I would welcome young talent in to the office and enjoy working with young people. They bring fresh energy and fresh ideas and sometimes we all need that – we need to recognise that we can get so set in our ways we cannot see new possibilities.
Often in the late 1980s and 1990s, people who came on work experience were seen as a ‘pain’ to be managed until their time was over. They often were sat in a corner with a newspaper in front of them to be ignored, unless they were asked to make tea/coffee for the team.
In recent years, it’s been even tougher for young people who are teenagers to get work experience at all, particularly in the creative industries as companies’ insurance wouldn’t often cover it – or that was an excuse that was used. They had to be 18 years old.