Why work with schools and colleges?
It has never been easier for employers to work with schools and colleges and reasons for doing so have never been more compelling.
Hundreds of thousands of employers are already working with schools and colleges and are considering deepening their relationships. Others are planning to get involved for the first time. All have a simple question to answer: what's in it for me?
Benefits for employers
Employers of all types, sizes and sectors are taking the opportunity to support children and young people in their education because partnerships with schools and colleges:
Employers of all types, sizes and sectors are taking the opportunity to support children and young people in their education because partnerships with schools and colleges:
Recruit the right people more easily and efficiently
- Getting involved with schools and colleges can improve the flow of young people into an industrial sector and cut recruitment costs through nurturing the interests of talented young people.
Retain the best people more easily and efficiently
- Getting involved with schools and colleges can help an enterprise to become the employer of choice in a locality or sector. Employees highly value the time they spend as volunteers in schools and colleges, and with increased job satisfaction comes better staff retention and improved productivity.
Develop staff in real life scenarios more easily and efficiently
- Getting involved with schools and colleges presents many opportunities to develop staff in a cost effective way, helping them to build, whether as a school governor or a student mentor, the basket of skills and competencies they need to get ahead.
Build brand awareness more easily and efficiently
- Getting involved with schools and colleges is a cost effective way to build understanding and reputation of an enterprise, brand or product, and then turn awareness into advocacy.
Self-interest drives much employer engagement with schools and colleges. By helping themselves, however, employers play a crucial part in building our future prosperity by helping to equip young people with the skillsets that underpin our economic success in the new world marketplace.
When employers work well with teachers, it makes a real difference to young people. It helps them to understand the links between the classroom and the workplace, improving their motivation. It helps them to achieve more and leave full-time education with skills, knowledge and attitudes that employers value.
For more information on the benefits that come from employers working with schools and colleges, click on the following links:
Anyone - from public, private or third sector, from SMEs or large national employers, from the range of industrial sectors, can become involved in partnerships with education.
In this film, Leicestershire business woman Gill Morris explains why small businesses are getting involved with schools and colleges by helping them as they teach Diplomas.
The following short You Tube film vividly demonstrates the benefits of working with schools and colleges.
Call for conference papers
The point of partnership: understanding employer engagement at the University of Warwick, Friday 15 October 2010
For further information and to subscribe to the event visit: www.educationandemployers.org/research/taskforce-research-conference-2010