Work experience provision

Work experience allows individuals to find out more about a career or specific role, grow their network of contacts, boost their confidence and develop their technical and essential skills in a real-world setting. 

These experiences help an individual make an informed choice about which roles will best suit their skill set, alongside other working preferences.

Work experience providers/managers can support individuals to develop their essential skills through the work experience, providing invaluable examples for them to refer to later on.

Using the Skills Builder approach to develop work experience provision

Work experience is a great opportunity for individuals to learn about, practise and reflect on their skills in a work-related context. The learning is made relevant and meaningful to learners, as they understand the value of the skills in employment.

Here you will find guidance on how our approach can support the work experience provider. In this case, you are delivering placements and can support skill development through your delivery.

You will also find guidance on how our approach can support the work experience manager (for example, you may be the provider of a career management platform that hosts the work experience of your partners). There are ways you can promote progress in the skills without delivering the placements yourself.

If you are the work experience provider; a facilitator-led approach

• Identify the skills and competencies that are most relevant to the area of work participants are engaging with.

• Map these skills and competencies to the essential skills and sharing this with participants.

• Identify the specific skills you want participants to develop through the work experience (it may be that there are natural opportunities to apply certain skills already in the planned activities, and it's a case of making this explicit, or you may want to create new opportunities to develop those skills).

• Tell participants the skill(s) and skill step(s) they are going to be focusing on (for example, by including a skill step in the work experience objectives/outcomes, alongside, for example, knowledge-based / technical skill-based objectives). Ideally this would be based on formative assessment (although this may not be possible with new participants). 

• Make the visual connection for participants to other contexts in which the skills have occurred, using the skill icons.

• Explain what 'good' looks like for those focus areas and providing examples of situations in work where applying the skill well has led to positive results.

• Make explicit the skill steps they are practising in activities, with 'stretch' opportunities (for example, by introducing and explaining a higher skill step) and scaffolding (for example, by introducing the expanded framework to participants) both available.

• Incorporate space for participants to reflect on and articulate their understanding of the skill(s) in question, and how they've applied their skills in a particular activities. Ideally you would use the reflection questions on the Universal Framework to support accurate reflections.

• Provide feedback and supporting participants to identify strengths and areas for development against the Universal Framework.

• Measure progress to track whether your actions are having a positive impact.
  
  

If you are the work experience manager; a learner-led approach

If you don't have influence on what the work experience provider delivers:

• Support learners to identify their strengths and areas for development against the Universal Framework.

• Support learners to set a skill-based target to develop through the work experience.

• Support learners to understand what 'good' looks like for their focus area (either by signposting to the relevant Universal Framework page, or (if delivered by a facilitator) explained by facilitators using the Framework's Building Blocks).

• Support learners to identify and/or create opportunities to develop their skills through the work experience, to work towards their developmental goals.

• Support learners to reflect on, articulate and track their skill development through the work experience.
  
  

If you have influence on what the work experience provider delivers:

• Share participants' skill targets and development goals with the providers

• Ask the provider to discuss the importance of the target skill(s) in their area of work

• Ask the provider to highlight opportunities where the participant can apply the skill

• Ask the provider to provide feedback on the participant's strengths and areas for development

Achieving an impact level for work experience provision

It is possible to achieve impact level  4 for work experience (management) provision. 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.