Industry placement stories: Practicalities and logistics video transcript

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This video shows some practical arrangement employers are making to share placements, work with providers, look after students health and well-being, place them in the right part of the organisation and give them the support they need.

Andy Dennahy - CTECH

They go through our normal onboarding, they learn health and safety about the center. They go through all the normal sign on processes that we have to do and they read all of our business processes, how we do the sales, how we do support. And they just then get put into the work environment and are brought along as we're doing work.

Alistair Easterfield – Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology

So we would expect the employers to be largely treating with the students as a normal employee.

However the proviso on that is also under 18 so sort of safeguarding rules and things have to apply so things like not sharing personal contact details with students and things, not meeting up with them outside of work I think is quite important for the protection of both the Employer and the student.

Phil Eves – BAM Construct UK

I have to watch things from a safeguarding perspective, so one of the big issues for me is to make sure that we're always in an open office environment and that doors are left open when there's meetings going on those kind of things, but all stuff understand that because 90% of our work recently has been in schools, so we're aware of all the DBS issues, all the safeguarding issues, but I have got to have half an eye on making sure that all these students are safe whilst they're on placement and they feel safe.

Jenny Sinclair – Cambridge University Hospitals

so safeguarding with the T Level students we already have policies within our trust for workers under the age of 18. So some of that process has already worked through. Obviously we'll work with our FE partners to make sure that if there's anything that we're missing that we're able to cover those boundaries, but safeguarding within a healthcare environment is obviously quite key in our minds anyway.

Alistair Easterfield – Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology

So I think the length of time that you need to lead into the project is quite important. It's also, I think, really important for the employers because it means that they could plan that into their work schedule if you like.

In our experience, employers want to know things in advance, maybe not two or three years in advance, but they know it's on the horizon now, aware of it and we can see just keep sort of chipping away so that they've got it on the back of their mind so that when it gets close to the time they know exactly what's needed. It's not coming as a surprise to them.

Julia Schumann-Pratt – Cambridge University Hospitals

So we have honorary contracts. Who's able to set them up? Hope they have to have full health clearance, making sure you know what requirements they need to do, the role that they're doing, do they need additional vaccinations to be in the science labs? What are they handling, what's the health and safety, and also any other mandatory training. If you're working on a ward, what do they need? If I think about students that are going to be in office areas, it's capacity. It's having somewhere to sit the student, it's how to work flexibly, how we can incorporate that to make sure they are supported at all times.

Helen Clements – Morgan Sindall

It's really important, one, that we have a project available for them to get those experiences on, and if I don't have a project in distance for those students to get to, then the reality is we're not going to be able to give them that really rich experience that they need. So we're looking at how can we work with our partners, so our consultants such as Concertus, such as the DPLs, how can we get them to enhance that experience for the students and their learning?

Dan Bridgewater – Baily Garner

So it's really important for Baily Garner and BAM to come together.

Baily Garner being a consultancy and BAM being a contractor.

So we felt that the partnership could offer a unique opportunity to T Level students to experience both sides of the sector.

We thought it would be a great opportunity, actually, if we could offer a student the experience of being on both sides of the fence so BAM and Baily Garner, joining together could offer that.

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Click on the links to see how to plan industry placements with colleges and training providers and give students meaningful work and projects.