When I first volunteered to help support the careers programme at a local school – The Pingle Academy - I had absolutely no idea how I would be able to help, or how it would help change our business for the better.
Becoming an Enterprise Adviser has opened my eyes to the massive benefits to everyone involved – the business, our staff, the school, the students and teaching staff - when schools and businesses work together.
The interactions we’ve helped make happen with Pingle are helping teachers understand the great careers for their students that are literally over the road. Together we’re inspiring students by showing them how what they’re learning in the classroom works in the real world and the careers this opens up. And as a company we’re helping to build a talent pipeline, which is so important given the competitive employment market we operate in locally.
Early in the process a few things became clear to me. I couldn’t do this all alone, for many reasons. To make a partnership between a school and business work properly it takes more than one person giving the odd talk and having the odd meeting with the careers leader. There’s so much you can do. There are so many different aspects to this business, from engineering to HR and finance and the people doing these roles, who are often better placed to talk to young people.
