Scaling up industry placements

Introduction

Purpose

This resource is designed to support employers who want to:

• Increase the number of industry placement opportunities they offer to young people studying T Levels
• Continue offering placements to as many students as they can

It shows how you can:

• Grow your placement programme as part of your organisation’s wider early career and talent, skills and recruitment strategies and plans
• Develop a coordinated approach to planning and delivery across multiple departments, sites or regions and multiple T Level routes
• Standardise placement models to reduce duplication and deliver multiple placements effectively and efficiently 

Who this resource is for

The resource is for:

• Employers who already host T Level students on industry placements and want to increase or maintain the number of placements they offer
• Employers planning to host industry placements and who want to design their placement programme with scale in mind from the outset
• Managers responsible for workforce planning, early careers and talent development, apprenticeships and recruitment
• Industry placement programme coordinators
• Line managers, supervisors and mentors supporting students in the workplace

How it’s organised

The resource has three parts:

• Planning – helps you to plan and deliver your industry placement programme 
• Case studies – show how employers are already planning and delivering placement programmes at scale
• Different approaches – Information about delivery approaches you can use to scale up the programme efficiently and effectively

Planning

This interactive planning document consists of:

• Framework and checklist – lists the activities, tasks and documents needed to plan growth, and allows you to identify the ones you already have in place 
• Action plan linked to the checklist – allows you to fill the gaps and put all the components of the framework together 

The framework contains 16 activities grouped into four workstreams (see the diagram below).  If you’re confident that you’ve already completed an activity, you don't need to check the task/resource boxes individually – just check the box at the bottom of the activity panel to mark the entire activity as already complete. 

The checklist and action plan are linked in both directions. Any tasks and documents you don’t select in the checklist go into the action plan automatically. When an action is completed and you check the green button in the ‘Status’ column on the action plan, the checklist refreshes automatically and the relevant item is shown as selected. 

These bi-directional links mean you can see at a glance:

• Which components of the framework you have in place and which are still to come
• How the action plan is progressing

Checklist selections are saved and the progress bar (% completed) updates automatically. Your inputs to the action plan are also saved automatically. There’s an option to print when you close the document. 

The framework itself has four workstreams:

One person – normally the industry placement coordinator – should ‘own’ the framework. They should take responsibility for:

• Completing the checklist
• Allocating actions to individuals 
• Setting start and end dates for each action
• Monitoring progress with the action plan and updating the status column 

Download the interactive planning document and use it to help you plan how to grow your placement programme.

Interactive planning document

Case studies – Set 1

These videos feature three employers that are already planning and delivering placement programmes successfully at scale

Lloyds Banking Group

Amazon

Bowmer + Kirkland

Case studies – Set 2

These videos show how employers in three different sectors are growing their placement programmes 

Engineering 

Construction 

Health 

Different approaches

This part of the resource contains information about six different approaches that you can use to grow your industry placement programme. Each approach can be used separately, or you can combine them. 

They are:

• Phased placement
• Rotation 
• Shared delivery 
• Delegated supervision 
• Regional or local initiatives 
• Industry or sectoral initiatives

Download the document for full information about:

• What these approaches enable you to do
• How they work
• Why you should consider them

It also contains examples of employers using these methods in combination.