Employer volunteering
Employer volunteering is an opportunity that benefits the two parties involved:
The beneficiaries (often young people), as they have the opportunity to find out more about a career or specific role, make links to essential skills required, meet new people and apply their essential skills.
The employer volunteers, as they are able to apply their own essential skills in a different context and have a real meaningful impact on others.
Using the Skills Builder approach to increase the impact of employer volunteering
The Skills Builder Universal Framework provides a tool for employer volunteering, this framework is used by educators, schools and colleges both nationally and internationally. By modelling the same language and expectations for essential skill development, employer volunteers can ensure that their messaging and examples reflect what the young people already using, removing the jargon and making it both consistent and accessible for all.
Here you will find guidance and top tips on how to use the common language of the Universal framework and ensure a positive and impactful experience for both the volunteers and the young people.
Increasing the impact - for the employer volunteers
Ask volunteers to:
Link essential skills to employment
Identify the essential skills that are most relevant to their role, thinking about their day-to-day activities and which 3 essential skills they use most often.
Be specific by linking a skill step to a regular experience in the workplace, e.g. "during weekly team meetings it's important that I contribute to decision making while valuing the ideas of others, as in our team we all bring a range of experiences and ideas."
Celebrate essential skills in the workplace, by speaking about them as something you are proud of and something you look for in others.
Share any essential skills or steps that are a development opportunity for you, this shows that it's a lifelong learning process.
If you are providing feedback to young people, use the essential skills framework steps to give specific feedback for their strengths and areas for development.
Use their own essential skills
Consider the audience they are speaking to, their stage of education and enthusiasm levels. Apply your own speaking skills e.g step 9: speak engagingly by using tone, expression and gesture to engage listeners and step 12: speak adaptively by changing my content depending on the response of listeners.
Increasing the impact - for the young people
Linking essential skills to employment
Introduce the essential skills to the young people before the volunteering experience to allow them to link this to previous learning and reflections
Ask the young people to prepare questions for the volunteers specifically about the essential skills
Using their own essential skills
Include opportunities for the young people to use their own essential skills during the volunteering experience such as speaking and listening. Highlight which steps are most relevant for them to apply, this could be relevant for career talks and mock interviews for example e.g listening step 7: I show I am listening by using open questions to deepen my understanding
Include opportunities for the young people to reflect on their own essential skills, consider their strengths and areas for improvement and how this might link to the job role or sector they are learning about.
Include opportunities for the young people to use their aiming high skills to think about setting and achieving goals to reach their next education or career stage e.g. aiming high step 9: I set goals and plan to involve others in the best way.
Achieving an impact level for your employer volunteering
It is possible to achieve impact level 4 for an employer volunteering. Below you will find actions to help you work towards achieving the full range of impact levels.
You can read more about the impact levels and the directory here.
Introduce the Universal Framework to participants: introduce relevant essential skills and their definitions.
Volunteers share with participants the links between essential skills and positive outcomes, e.g. how a certain skill has helped them improve in their job role or achieve career goals
Recommended:
You may want to provide links for the participants to continue to reflect on and build their skills after the volunteering session.
Follow the guidance to achieve impact level 1, plus:
Ask (reflective) questions and/or provide feedback to support participants to reflect on their strengths and areas for development in relation to the Universal Framework. E.g. how did they apply their listening skills during the session
You could keep track of the stage/step level at which participants are working, and make this visible to participants. This assessment could be completed by the participants themselves or their teacher/tutor. This will help the employer volunteers talk about the skills at an appropriate level.
Recommended:
Support participants to log or articulate specific examples of when they've applied their skills, using a recognised reflection method, such as STAR.
Follow the guidance to achieve impact level 1 and 2, plus:
Make explicit to participants the skill steps they are expected to apply through the activities.
Design activities so as to allow participants to apply and practise their essential skills at an appropriate stage/step for them. e.g. completing a project which they must present to the employer volunteers in the session, or that feedback is provided on.
Recommended:
Participants focus on one skill and one step at a time. Make this explicit for the participants as they complete the activities.
To differentiate, provide a range of 3 step levels for participants/facilitators to choose from, and/or share the expanded framework (see below).
Ask reflection questions during/after a specific task, to encourage learners to reflect on and articulate how they've applied their skills.
Follow the guidance to achieve impact levels 1, 2, and 3, plus:
Provide a skills evaluation/ assessment at the start and end of the programme, so you can quantify if progress has been made. You may want to include more regular reviews. This assessment could be completed by the participants themselves or their teacher/tutor.
We'd need to see evidence that you are tracking progress in at least 1 of the skills.
Supporting Resources
For a refresher on all the tools/resources mentioned below, see here.
Introduce the Universal Framework to participants. It’s important the participant and employer volunteer takes time to get to know what the essential skills are, their definitions, the different steps of progress, and how to build and practise each step.
Refer to the Building Blocks in the 'Build It' section of each skill step to help participants understand what 'good' looks like before they engage in activities.
Filter for 'educators' in the 'Build It' section of each skill step for information about how to teach it, reinforce it and assess it.
Filter for 'individuals' in the 'Build It' section of each skill step for information about why each step matters (in the workplace, as well as in education and wider life).
Embed the reflection questions in the 'Build It' section of each skill step into programme delivery.
Ask participants to complete one or more self-assessments for a skill/skills during the programme. Ideally, you'd have pre- and post-programme scores, to be able to report on the impact of the programme.
If possible, facilitate participants' self-assessments - ask them to justify their assessments, and work with them to identify opportunities to build on strengths and improve weaker areas.
Ask participants to complete the reflective log, skill record, skill workbook or skill passport throughout the programme.
Ask participants to complete their skills-based CV using the skills-based CV guide as part of the programme.
If the programme is delivered to a group by a facilitator:
Use the group-level assessment tool to build an understanding of your groups' skill levels and inform future planning.
Deliver the short lessons (there are 2-3 for each skill step) and/or skill workshops.
Use the skill certificates to celebrate progress.
Use our videos to introduce and explain to participants the skills and/or specific steps they will be working on.
Drop these picture files of the essential skill icons onto programme resources to make a visual connection to the skills participants may be developing in other areas.
Signpost participants to Launchpad, to learn more about and practise their skills. There's a space on Launchpad for them to record evidence of how they've applied their skills over the course of the programme.
If participants are struggling to understand and/or develop a certain skill step, break that step down for them into 'stepping stones' using the expanded framework. This is also a useful tool for tracking progression over smaller time scales.
Find support to discuss the positive outcomes related to essential skill development in our recent research reports.