Workplace experiences

What is modern work experience?

We’re on the cusp of something new: the Government’s ambition to guarantee every young person 10 days’ worth of meaningful workplace experiences during secondary school, offering them the chance to find their spark – and giving employers the talent, skills and diversity they need for the future. It could be a two hour tour, one day project, or group placement for three days – each can be the spark that tells a young person: “I belong here. I could do this. I might be brilliant at this.”

Explore what this can look like for your business and what you can do to get started.

Why invest time and resources in workplace experiences?

For employers, modern work experience is more than giving back. It’s about investing in your future workforce, strengthening local talent pipelines, and showcasing your sector to the next generation. It raises your profile, delivers social value in the community and builds pride across your existing teams - a sense of purpose that’s proven to boost motivation and retention. With flexible ways to get involved, from a few hours to a week, there’s always a route that works for you.

Use the resources here to help you understand and demonstrate the rationale for investing time and resources in offering workplace experiences.

How do I get started?

Do you remember the first time you stepped into a workplace, when adult life suddenly came into focus? A time when something that seemed ordinary - a task, a conversation, a glimpse of the workplace - lit a spark that stayed with you? For young people, those moments are often hidden in the everyday. A passing comment, a small responsibility, what feels minor to us can be transformative to them. These are the sparks when confidence begins to grow, when a subject at school suddenly feels alive, when a teenager sees themselves differently. It’s about investing in your future workforce and strengthening local talent pipelines, while raising your profile by giving back to the community. We know it can seem daunting to think about safeguarding, time, space. But none of these are insurmountable.

By following our step-by-step suggestions, you will know how to get started, and where to get support.

Improve impact & collaborate for success

We don’t need to tell you all the many reasons why workplace experiences are so important to both young people and businesses, but change can sometimes be a little daunting. So, we’d like to reassure you this new approach should make things more impactful, help more businesses get involved and give more opportunities to even more young people, especially those currently missing out.

Use the resources here to explore how you can align your work experience to best practice framework equalex, how you can collaborate with others to have more impact and how to lead the way and become an advocate for modern work experience.

If you're not offering workplace experiences, you're probably losing the best talent to somebody who is. Instead of paying for recruitment, we invest in workplace experiences. So, by the time we're ready to employ someone, we already know who.

Tom Palmer

Co-Founder/Director, Ocean City Media

Over the past 11 years, the Pathways work experience programme has enabled Cisco to recruit a more diverse and engaged early-in-career workforce, fostering fresh perspectives and innovation while creating meaningful opportunities for young people to learn about the tech industry.

Kathryn Baddeley

Head of CSR, Cisco UK & Ireland

Hospitality is a brilliant industry to give young people their first experience of work. Exciting, inspiring and influential work experiences shape young minds and we’re an industry with no barriers to entry or progression, our world is full of opportunities no matter your start in life.