The transition from education into employment is critical, but often difficult for young people and businesses alike to navigate.
Young people are more qualified and ambitious than ever before. Meanwhile, unfilled vacancies are at a high and employers struggle to recruit and retain the employees they need.
The challenge
In theory, better qualified young people should result in fewer hard-to-fill vacancies.
Instead, youth unemployment remains persistently high and businesses are struggling to recruit talent with the motivation, skills and qualifications that are required.
The reality is that there is a big gap in expectations between those entering the labour market and those recruiting from it. Although highly qualified, young people have left education in recent years without the traditional opportunities to get hands-on experience and insights. To them, it can feel unrelatable and daunting.
Businesses must actively work to shift this paradigm for young people and build the foundations to sustain smoother transitions in the future. However, we frequently hear that businesses are unsure how to engage and communicate meaningfully with young people, despite expansion and investment into their corporate social responsibility and outreach provision.
The good news
Skills Builder Partnership and its Universal Framework for essential skills provide the answer to bridging this gap by defining a common language for eight essential skills, including teamwork, listening and problem solving. As 75% of UK secondary- and college-aged students have a touchpoint with the Partnership, it provides a familiar approach towards developing the essential skills for success in the world of work and opens up a common ground between education and employment that businesses can build on.
By offering young people the chance to build essential skills in outreach programmes and initiatives, businesses are enabling them to experience the workplace in a way that they can relate to and feel prepared for, whilst helping them to develop the essential skills they need to succeed. By providing these opportunities explicitly, businesses can strengthen the workforce of today as well as build the workforce of tomorrow.
Want to be one of them?
Watch our pre-recorded workshop on ‘Helping young people succeed – the role of employers’ where we:
· continue to define the challenge together with guest speaker Milly Dawson from Movement to Work
· showcase the Universal Framework for essential skills – the missing piece to smoothing this transition
· provide practical tips, guidance and advice for your business
You can find out more about the employers who are already members of the Skills Builder Partnership and how it is supporting them to transform the impact of their outreach, recruitment and staff development at www.skillsbuilder.org/employers.
