Is work experience remotely possible post-Covid?

Work experience is tricky enough to arrange at the best of times, but how are you getting on in a pandemic during which the vast majority of businesses are reducing staff on site, not making room for more?

When it comes to vocational learning, work experience is, obviously, a big deal. Having the chance to get to grips with the intricacies of your chosen profession in a real-world, functioning workplace is priceless. This is not an experience that can be replicated in the classroom.

But when the Covid-19 pandemic forced colleges and businesses to close their doors this year, learners on vocational courses found themselves facing an uncertain future.

And now, several weeks into the new academic year, business is still far from usual for many firms. Employers have a duty to ensure the welfare of everyone on their sites, and the way that many companies work has changed beyond recognition.

So what does this mean for work experience? How can colleges maintain this key element of vocational education amid rapidly changing government guidance and the need to keep students and the people they work with safe?

For Kenny MacInnes, vice-principal for learning and student experience at Forth Valley College, in Scotland, one thing is certain: work experience still needs to happen in some form, even if colleges need to get a bit more creative in how they offer it.

“Getting work experience is fundamental,” he says. “It’s hugely important to us and it’s something that we work really, really hard on, to ensure that we have meaningful work placements. And so we have worked very hard to try and maintain our work placements now, as we see it as being so pivotal.”

Rachel Topliss, head of employer academy partnerships and work-related activity at The Sheffield College, agrees that hands-on work experience remains essential on vocational courses. Like MacInnes, she has spent much of the strange past few months ensuring that the college’s established relationships with employers are maintained.

“We’ve continued to communicate with all our employers through lockdown and offered support in whatever way we can,” she says. “Sometimes this has just been a virtual coffee on a Google Meet and at other times we’ve attended their remote team meetings. It’s been great to keep in touch and keep discussing ideas and solutions to ensure our students continue to benefit.”

That’s not to say that there haven’t been issues. While Topliss says she has been encouraged by the number of businesses that have been in touch to ask when they can have their next student, others have, understandably, asked to delay committing to a placement opportunity until Christmas or beyond. And MacInnes has been having similar conversations in his area.

“Obviously some companies may go under. Some are just saying it’s not the right time at the moment. They say they will engage in the future but don’t see this as a priority for the next six months or a year,” he says.

But while it may not be business as usual for most employers, the requirements of vocational qualifications remain, and this means that students need placements - and a lot of placements, at that.

For instance, at The Manchester College, every student undertakes external work experience for a minimum of two weeks, with some 3,700 work placements undertaken by students from the college last year.

Principal Lisa O’Loughlin says that, far from being dissuaded by the challenges posed by Covid-19, the college’s commitment to ensuring that learners get the best possible experience is stronger than ever.

“Our whole strategy is founded on work experience and critical work-related behaviours,” she says. “Our attitude has been, yes, it’s going to be harder, and yes, it’s going to be more challenging, but we’re going to make adaptations and take employers with us. It’s the right thing to do for our students, so the extra work is worth it.”

So what does a workable new approach look like? Many employers are currently offering online work experience in the short term, O’Loughlin explains. This might sound like a poor imitation of the hands-on practice that students would expect to get from their placements, but it does accurately represent how many employees are engaging with their roles right now, she points out.

Other partnerships are taking a blended approach that O’Loughlin describes as “job carving”. “We look at the role that the student would have occupied, and work out the bits that they can do on site and the bits that can be done through a more blended approach. They can be working at distance and be supervised over [Microsoft] Teams throughout the week and come on site for a few elements, which will limit the impact on the business environment, but enables [students] to get experience of it,” explains O’Loughlin. “We’ve gone with that solution to lots of employers and they have been happy to take that up.”

Many of the college’s partners in the construction industry have been particularly “brilliant” at this, she adds, working with college staff to co-deliver induction sessions on campus, before “adapting their practices and their programmes to enable students to come on site”.

Meanwhile, Topliss has seen a jump in demand for students who can undertake completely remote work experience.

“We’ve had a lot of requests for students to work on employer projects remotely within marketing, media, IT and customer service functions,” she says.

To help facilitate this, The Sheffield College is filming some workplaces (while complying with social distancing) to provide virtual site visits, enabling students to view local employer premises.

“This will progress to virtual placements later in the autumn and these images and videos will also be included in the online advertisements of industry placements, allowing students to submit interactive CVs, vlogs and other content as part of their application,” Topliss explains.

Tech-based solutions such as these provide ways to bridge the gap even in professions that traditionally rely on face-to-face contact. O’Loughlin gives the example of counselling placements, where trainees usually have to conduct sessions with clients in person; these are now taking place over the phone and via video conferencing with success, she says.

But what about roles that require physical interaction between people? Placements for students training in sectors such as health and social care have become particularly challenging, MacInnes points out. With care homes disproportionately affected by Covid-19, and the majority still operating with extremely tight restrictions on who can visit, many are simply unable to offer any kind of in-person work experience placements at the moment. And the anxiety about entering these spaces affects all concerned, from the employers to the students and their parents, he adds.

However, O’Loughlin has found that in some cases it has been possible to reassure all involved, especially employers, through taking a concerted, proactive approach to potential issues.

“We’ve gone in and looked at a lot of the risk assessments and offered solutions,” she says. “If we’re asking employers to come up with the solutions from a standing start, that’s probably not going to work because it’s another request on top of everything we’re already asking them to do, and the challenges that they’re facing.

“So for us it’s been about going with solutions. It is a mixed picture across different sectors, but certainly our employers have been fantastic so far in adapting, and there have been very few that have said, ‘No, we just can’t do that.’”

Another way to bolster the confidence of employers is to make sure they understand the benefits of taking on placement students, Topliss says - adding that this will become even more important as colleges try to establish new partnerships in the wake of the recent lockdown.

“We always talk about mutual benefits to the employer and the student. Our students can support employers in so many ways to break through the challenges of lockdown, and this is our focus,” she says.

“Colleges should embrace community business issues, particularly now, and seek out those mutual benefits. If the employer feels like their business has nothing to gain, the working relationship is likely to be short-lived. But young people are vibrant, creative individuals, often with strong IT skills, so have so much to give.”

According to Topliss, if colleges can emphasise these mutual benefits, they will find that there are still “plenty” of work experience opportunities out there - but those opportunities might look different to how they looked pre-Covid. “There are so many new and different opportunities to enhance a student’s employability skills. Being open to moving away from tradition and having the confidence to risk trying new ways of working is what’s going to make a difference. It’s really hard to get the risk versus success balance right, but it’s definitely worth taking the chance and exploring if the ultimate goal benefits the students,” she says.

O’Loughlin agrees with this. And as far as she is concerned, it is more important than ever to be willing to take the risk on something different, as students have arguably never needed work experience more - the same issues that are causing challenges for placements are going to have knock-on effects that will make it essential for young people to be ready to hit the ground running in their careers.

“The approach that we’re taking is that career-focused education is absolutely fundamental, so it’s the right thing to continue with,” she says. “And it’s incredibly important that these young people continue with a career-focused education because, probably more than any other generation, they’re going to experience challenges, given the economic situation they will face when they enter the labour market.”

Zofia Niemtus is sponsored content editor at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 2 October 2020 issue under the headline “Is work experience remotely possible with Covid-19?”