Forget pimply youths doing the filing: the right work experience programme can give your business a real boost

Forget pimply youths doing the filing: the right work experience programme can give your business a real boost

It must make the permanent staff feel old. Four out of ten call-centre workers at B2B telemarketing company Quantum TM are university students on year-long work experience placements.

‘For us, we get the enthusiastic, ambitious young people every employer craves,’ says Niaz Rahmani, marketing manager at Quantum. ‘For them, the work they do is very much related to their course. They get a real insight into the working world.’

The students work from 9am to 5.30pm and are paid the wages of permanent employees in the same jobs. In addition to the experience they gain, training programmes are offered to develop skills for anything from leadership to sales.

It seems to have paid off for Quantum. The company’s work experience scheme won an award this year from the National Council for Work Experience (NCWE). And it’s obviously not doing any harm to business either: Quantum’s turnover has doubled every year for the past three years, according to Rahmani.

More than meets the eye

Heather Collier, manager at NCWE, explains that the appeal of work experience students goes far beyond the obvious benefits of cheap or free labour. ‘Basically, you get an intelligent, motivated and flexible worker,’ she says. ‘Flexibility and availability are key: students are available at the time of year when the need for personnel is the greatest.

‘They can also take on projects that would otherwise take time away from full-time employees,’ she adds. ‘Every company’s got something in the bottom of an in-tray that, if they had time to sort out, would make them more competitive.’

Such project-based work experience has paid dividends for Major League Soccer Camps (MLSC), which runs children’s football programmes in the US. Although the UK office only has two full-time staff, it still manages to take on five students.

‘Each student is given a different business-related project,’ explains Meg Warrington, UK manager of MLSC. ‘We have one French exchange student who is looking at expanding our recruitment into Europe. Another student is working on increasing our number of female coaches, while another is focusing on how to improve the employee handbook we give our coaches to include more useful information.’

Warrington is in no doubt about the benefits. ‘It’s a helping hand for our business,’ she says. ‘With only two of us in the office, we don’t have time to take on the smaller projects that we’d like to – and the students offer a fresh perspective.’