Employment and Skills, Jobs

Work Experience companies WHO's in, WHO's out

Work Experience companies WHO's in, WHO's out

Work Experience Scheme Host Participants

Today Chris Grayling is meeting with companies participating in the Work Experience scheme.

The £1 Billion pound Youth Contract was launched by the Deputy Prime Minister to fund youth work participation initiatives, one of which is the now under-pressure work experience scheme.

Work Experience Scheme.
The scheme involves a voluntary placement of between 2 to 8 weeks in either a Nationally Agreed Organisation or a Locally Agreed Organisation. For example, Tesco is part of a nationally agreement whereas Sainsbury’s, before withdrawing, was part of a local agreement between regional stores and job centre plus teams. This is important as the DWP does not have a complete list of locally arranged host providers and their national-level agreements have not yet been collated and as such are not available to the public.

Companies who are OUT

TK Maxx
withdrawn from scheme           
Waterstones
withdrawn from scheme
Superdrug
withdrawn from scheme
Maplin
withdrawn from scheme
99p Stores
withdrawn from scheme
Marie Curie
withdrawn from scheme
Scope
withdrawn from scheme
Shelter
withdrawn from scheme
Miss Selfridge
proposed to join scheme, but did not sign-up

Sainsburys
local arrangements annulled as it went against company policy
Poundland
conducting internal review, withdrawn from Government but wants to setup individual locally-agreed scheme with JCP
Matalan
conducting internal review, will not take any participants until the scheme’s benefit sanctions are removed
Burger King
conducting a review, paused work experience recruitment has no plans to take individuals through work scheme
Argos
conducting a review, paused work experience recruitment and no plans to take individuals through work  scheme
Oxfam
withdrawn from scheme, undertaking internal review of recruitment procedures
MIND
withdrawn from work experience scheme but still participants, via Serco, of the Work Programme placements scheme.

 Locally Arranged Work Experience Hosts

Boots
Does not have a UK-wide work experience policy – the recruitment is driven store by store and is up to the store manager and the local job centre plus advisor.

Pizza Hut
local stores can choose to recruit work experience candidates

Barnados
conducting a review, continuing to recruit work experience candidates

British Heart Foundation
conducting a review, continuing to recruit work experience candidates

 Organisations still registered IN scheme

ASDA
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
HMV
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
Arcadia Group
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
Salvation Army
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
Primark
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
WH Smiths
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
Greggs
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
Holland & Barrett
remains on scheme with no plans for a review
Royal Mail
conducting work experience policy review but remains on scheme

TESCO
remains on scheme, but questions government rules on terminating benefits for candidates who leave the programme and also are in consultation with local providers about setting up paid work experience schemes

We spoke to DWP’s press office today and they informed us that locally arranged solutions, where a local Jobcentre Plus advisor makes contact with a local company to get a 16-24 year old long term unemployed individual work experience, counts as work experience under this scheme. DWP went on to explain that thousands of people are undertaking placements with SME organisations ranging from accountancy firms to local pubs.

The DWP also stated that they have no central database of nationally-arranged host providers exist, but they are currently in the process of collating the information with the desired outcome of publishing a list of participants in the near future.

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