Employer volunteering

Employer volunteering is an opportunity that benefits the two parties involved:

1. 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.

2. 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.