Bryony Kingsland
Welcome back to the podcast. To recap part one, we explored concepts such as employability and the readiness of young individuals for the workplace post education. Additionally, we examined the variations in communication preferences across different age groups. Now we delve into the crucial aspects of work life balance and how the level of trust in employers influences employee commitment.
Eric Oliver
A lot of what I got from Rob's section there. Really revolved around the trust in the employer to bring it back a little bit. So it's, it's very transactional still as employment is. However, it was very much, I trust that my employer will return the favour more or less. So when you look at that, and I think that's often when you see a lot of people knew, is it that they're with employers, they trust less that they'll be given something back, you know, if you're working for a massive conglomerate.
And you don't necessarily see yourself getting anything back for putting extra hours in. Is that it? Is it, is it, is it really waiting for something for something in return? Is that kind of what we're looking at as the trusted employers? Does that change things?
I think a lot of people, especially with the employability market and with some employers have definitely taken advantage and that's why we've kind of got more of a pessimistic look, maybe.
Kira Foster
Yeah, I think that's true because I do find that a lot of employers do take an advantage of it almost because they know that they've got the power at the end of the day, because obviously if they choose to, they could fire you or, you know, they've got control of your career progression. So a lot of people, you know, they, they do what they're told, which is obviously what they're employed to do.
But I mean, in the sense of like, you know, if you work overtime and then it's not. noticed, or if you do extra work or you put extra effort in, you're less likely to want to stay over or, you know, cause you're not going to get anything back from it. So yeah, it's a lot more transactional now, I think in the workplace, rather than, you know, the employer tells you to do something and then the employee follows.
It's a lot more like, well, what am I going to get from you? As an employee, and you as my employer, so.
Bryony Kingsland
Do you think that's down to the fact that we're now very much in an employee's market because we have all the skill shortages that we've got? Or is that a cultural change, do you think, just in the approach of young people to employment now?
Kira Foster
I think it's the approach young people have now, to be honest, because I was recently at a City & Guilds event and I was kind of talking about my career to people and like how I work and, you know, attitudes to work kind of came up. A few people did say to me like, Oh, I wish in my twenties, I, I kind of stood up for myself or, or I wish that I was, have that attitude in, in that job that I did.
And, you know, I've got a good work ethic. My parents are like hard workers. I've always grown up around people that encouraged me to work hard and push myself. You know, take opportunities. But I also think a lot of our generation, we stand up for ourselves quite a lot. And I think social media has given us the confidence to do that because of the fact that you have people encouraging that.
And then if you go on TikTok and you go on the right hashtag or the right kind of, um, page, you will see that kind of encouragement. Like a lot of my friends have jumped from job to job because they just haven't liked it. And they've realised that I spend eight hours of my day at this job. Why would I want to spend eight hours of my day unhappy?
Bryony Kingsland
So that's a good point, you know, that's really interesting. Thanks. Thanks, Kira.
Hilary Gwilliam
Can I just add one thing? I think it's really interesting what you say there, actually, Kira, because the ability to do that and have that conversation in the right way with your employer is really an important skill, actually, isn't it?
It's a, it's a communication skill. It's, it's finding the right time with the right intent. These are the sorts of things that we don't really think about in terms of, you know, preparing people for work, but actually they are quite naturally there, but practicing them somewhere is probably quite a good thing to do.
So yeah, you know, when you get to the workplace, you feel confident that you're doing that in the right way.
Kira Foster
Yeah, exactly. I think as well, like I have always been the type of person that won't talk about money with people because I'm like that, you know, their personal thing. So when I've gone into jobs and I'm.
I've been underpaid or there's like an issue with money because I was self employed at one point. So obviously I had to ring people up and ask them to pay their bills or their invoices to me. It always made me feel really anxious and uncomfortable. And that was a big issue with me. So I think opening up that kind of avenue to people.
Because a lot of my friends actually are quite confident in that aspect of that. If they, you know, they've been interviewed for a job and they're actually, you know, they reveal the salary to them. They're like, well, that's not enough for me to survive off or whatever. Whereas I've caught myself in situations where I'm working a job where I actually can't live off the money that I'm earning.
And then I feel too uncomfortable to be like, actually, can you pay me more? Because I'm actually worth more. And I think it is a big confidence thing, and I think it's taken away that, I don't know, the anxiety around asking, because you feel like, you know, the worst thing they can say is no, and they can't fire you if you say, oh, by the way, can you pay me, or can I have a raise because I've been working harder, or I need more money because I'm not living off what I've got.
So, I think that's another skill that people gain over time.
Eric Oliver
Rob, when we were chatting before, you mentioned differences you faced in careers advice and guidance support across schools and colleges. Can you explain what those differences were and how they affected your careers choices?
Rob Cotter
At school and college, I have access, uh, careers information from the careers advisor.
At school, it was very biased. Um, I think it's the correct word to use. They want you to naturally progress with them. At sixth form, obviously, they've got very limited courses to do a trade. They don't offer that at sixth form. It's more of an academic point. Once I sort of found that out with the careers advisor, I stopped accessing them, stopped asking them for help.
Went on to college, done the trade I wanted to do, and while I was there, I was accessing careers advisor there. They were very understanding of the fact that I had an inspiration to go on to university. They were very open to that. So they, they're not specialists in the area that I chose. However, they went and researched the market that I wanted to go into.
So they did help with the likes of CV writing and going to help with interview techniques and just sort of talked to me about an interview process. So that is a very, very different view to what school had. The fact that college were thought of bending over backwards to try and help me progress the direction I wanted means quite a lot.
Bryony Kingsland
So Rob, what you're basically saying is the school bias was towards getting you to university. And they basically had one target in mind, but at college, they did a lot of research and gave you a lot of different options that you could take, but tied to your preferences. Is that what you mean?
Rob Cotter
Yeah. It was cool.
It was just going to sixth form and then obviously sixth form, do your A levels and then go into university. I got the impression it was all about numbers. But whereas college is much more open, so therefore can't be specialised in an area, but they were willing to put that time and effort in to research.
Bryony Kingsland
Wow. That's a very different approach to CIAG careers in information advice and guidance. from those two different institutions, isn't it? Thanks, Rob. Kira?
Kira Foster
Sorry, just to kind of go on from what Rob was saying. Do you think it's because with colleges, their kind of advertising standpoint is getting people into work, whereas schools, they kind of have more of a weight when it comes to getting people into university, so they can say, like, Oh, we got this amount of students into Oxford, or we got this amount of students into Richmond Groups, that kind of thing.
And obviously, because a lot of schools are state funded, and same with universities, do you think that all has a link to why there's such a difference between them? So with schools, they can keep you in sixth form. So obviously, that's more funding for them and then obviously feed you on to university.
Whereas colleges have a stream that's really into work, or universities, so there's no bias there. Yeah, so it's almost like their advertising standpoint is that they can say, we've got this percentage of our students into employment, whereas with school it's to get this percentage of students into A levels and universities.
Rob Cotter
I think Keira has hit their nail on the head, that it was about getting you employment ready and getting you out into employment. And then there's this phrase that goes around, is 'career is not courses' at college. So it's getting them ready for a career, not just bums on seats. This is a course. That's a very different approach.
Bryony Kingsland
Yeah. Thanks for that guys. That's really interesting. Okay. So Kira and Rob, as part of that sort of employability skills and being ready for work and being ready for work. Ready to enter the world of work. Were you given the option of getting work experience at school or college? Or if you weren't, do you think that's something that could have helped you?
Rob Cotter
So I was definitely given the option to do work experience. I found work experience and done it. I think that definitely helped getting into employment. It's sort of your first point of contact, potentially with employers. It gives you a real taste of what work is actually like out there. It can be really tricky to get work experience.
From sort of a college point of view, I was in a group of 20, 25 people in just a local town. There isn't 20 or 25 employers that are willing to take on full work experience. So there's a big push from what I can only assume is governments and Awarding Bodies to do this work experience. However, it needs to be a realistic aim.
I think this is where T levels are coming in. There's a lot more employability stuff in terms of, um, industry placements. But it's whether there's enough industry placements out there, especially working, I work in the trades, and trade related. It's a big risk for them to take someone on at, say, 16.
There's all the health and safety stuff to go with it, paid for work to deal with, and stuff like that. I think it's a turn off for employers.
Bryony Kingsland
Kira? Yeah, I mean, I had mandatory work experience when I was like back in high school, and I think with it you have to be very specific of what you want to do. I mean, I did two, well, I did it every year since, because I used to work backstage at some catwalk shows with my mentor.
She gave me a lot of work experience. So sometimes it's who you know as well, because my dad, he's a carpenter and he has the offers all the time. With our local college, he, he gets asked to take them on and like Rob said, he has problems with the insurance and liability and all of these other aspects.
And of course he also doesn't have the time to be training somebody else. And the issue that we've got is that a lot of employees have that kind of viewpoint or they, again, don't have enough time. But a lot of entry level jobs nowadays want you to have that work experience. They want you to have, like, I'm in the creative industries.
If you're applying for an internship or a entry level position like an assistant, they still expect you to have two to five years worth of experience behind you. And if you don't have that experience, they might not even consider you for the job. I mean, obviously, we're encouraged to apply anyway, but because of that experience, it gives them an out to say, no, we, we don't want to bring you on board.
So that ties back to the ready made, oven baked employee, basically, that you can walk into a job and do it straight away. But I think it's really important because, see, I've got a lot of friends that are teachers, so I hope what I'm about to say isn't going to offend them, but a lot of those teachers haven't been in the workplace.
They've gone through university, they've done their teaching degree and then they've gone straight into school and they're trying to teach them how to get into the trades or into an accounting firm or whatever, where they haven't had that experience personally. So that becomes a bit of a disconnect because they can't draw from their own experience.
And I found that with my university lecturers as well, a lot of them just went in that route and then they were teaching me about the workplace, but they actually had no idea what the workplace looked like anymore. So. Yeah,
Bryony Kingsland
That's really interesting that actually that view that a lot of people that are teaching you about the workplace have no experience with the workplace, but also about being oven ready.
But even in an entry level job, employers still expecting you to have three to five years experience. How do they expect you to get that? If it's an entry level job?
Kira Foster
Exactly. It's a bit backwards. , but yeah, in those types of industries as well, it's, it's who you know a lot of the time. So, you know, I didn't know anybody in fashion.
So when I came into fashion, it seemed a bit more cut off to me, but I was going to university with people that had family in fashion, so they were able to go to the studios and mingle with those people and have the work experience. I think it's very important, but the way the working world is at the minute, yeah, they do expect quite a lot from you in respect of experience.
Bryony Kingsland
And is that feasible via something like an internship?
Kira Foster
It depends because with internships, they don't pay you unless obviously it is a paid internship, but even then they don't pay you enough to live. So it does cut down the amount of working class people because I wouldn't be able just to go off to London and do an internship in a fashion brand because I wouldn't be able to survive.
I wouldn't have the money to be able to support myself. My parents wouldn't be able to afford to support me over there. Whereas someone who comes from money will be able to be able to have that opportunity and be able to. Go and have that experience and then get that job that maybe I won't be able to because I didn't get that internship.
So yeah, it is a bit of a problem, I think.
Bryony Kingsland
There's a social mobility issue there, isn't there?
Kira Foster
Yeah, definitely.
Bryony Kingsland
Robert?
Rob Cotter
Yeah, it's just about sort of the younger sort of lecturers or teachers. I found sort of one and I haven't worked out in the industry for long. And I think this is where establishments, whether it be schools, colleges, universities, need to have a real push behind industry days.
A lot of these establishments encourage industry days, but is there flexibility during the working week, working year to go out on these?
Eric Oliver
Yeah, no, it's definitely important. So I'm going to go on a bit of a really mild tangent here, just to start off a curious bit, especially about the working class section at the end.
So it is a bit of a catch 22 sometimes with these internships, you know, you can't really get out of the work because you can't afford it. And then it leads to you struggling in an industry. So often you see people from certain backgrounds, particularly poor backgrounds, that don't get in sectors like fashion because of that reason.
And I think similar to the intergenerational thing, where the different generations, they provide so much insight, you really get the same in class. And I think those sectors where working class people struggle, you really kind of, you lose that insight.
Kira Foster
Yeah, exactly. And I've, I've had that conversation quite a lot because.
A lot of the great, like, fashion designers were working class, so Alexander McQueen, he was someone that a lot of our syllabuses and the way that we work was changed in regards of how art and fashion related, but he was a working class talent. Whereas nowadays, a lot of the newer voices coming up are from those richer backgrounds and cultures really affected when the working class is cut out of the creative industries and those working class students won't get the same opportunities because of that money issue in internships.
And instead of employers taking the chance with these entry level jobs and training someone up because they lose money when they train somebody. That attitude really does need to change.
Bryony Kingsland
Do you think that sometimes employers recruitment tactics can be really unhelpful to people applying for a job? So they'll ask for a degree in potentially, you know, an entry level job, which again makes it really difficult, but also in some cases is totally and utterly unnecessary for that job.
Did you find a lot of that when you were applying for, for your first jobs?
Kira Foster
Yeah, I was. Again, with the creative industries, any entry level job wanted you to have some sort of undergraduate degree, basically. And that's just not the case, to bring up my own experience. My friend, she's only just started the Open University because she always was under the impression, like, I can't afford to go to university, I had to go straight into work.
So she did odd jobs for a while, and now she's doing special needs education, and she's doing a social work part time degree. So, I think it does cut off a lot of people because they get intimidated by it almost. Because they think, oh, I'm not qualified enough to apply for this job, so why should I even bother?
Yeah, it is that kind of barrier that they put up, I think.
Eric Oliver
I was talking to Bryony before about this. When it comes to job adverts in particular, When you see them as kind of younger people, is there anything you see that really kind of turns you away from the vacancies? Are the things that you see, you know, just immediate red flags for instance?
Kira Foster
Uh, one of my red flags when I was looking, because I wasn't looking too long ago, is if they don't include the salary. Because that usually means they're going to try and lowball you, if that makes sense. Like, I understand why they don't include it, but sometimes that is a red flag. And I also think, it depends how many times you see that job pop up on the job boards.
Because say, if it was filled, and then it pops back up again. It does kind of give you that sense of, there's a high turnover there. It might not be a good working environment. So yeah, there's quite a few.
Bryony Kingsland
What excites you about a job advert? What would make you find it appealing and want to apply for it?
Kira Foster
I would say what the actual role is, if they lay out the role in detail, I sometimes get a bit more excited about that because I kind of know what I'm going to be walking into. And like, if it kind of hits all of my skills, so if they're like, oh, I want someone who can work Adobe, or I want someone who's got strong illustration skills and knows the constructions of garments, things like that.
That excites me a bit because I'm like, yeah, I can do that. I've got the skills for that and how they set it out really, because sometimes I find if you click on the link that they provide or however they make you apply, if it's a more friendly and open kind of wording and layout, then yeah, that makes it a bit more appealing for me to actually want to get the job.
And sometimes they even list the benefits. So sometimes it'll say that you have a discount or, you know, they include insurance. What you can get from the job rather than what they can just get from you, that's what makes it more, a bit more appealing for me.
Bryony Kingsland
So that more transactional approach, so you're doing something for your employer but you do expect your employer to give back, is that what you're looking for in a job advert?
Kira Foster
Yeah, sometimes, because I think you obviously want to, with the transactional side of it, if it is all just about the boss, it does feel a bit more like, oh, I might be mistreated in this situation, like they're not going to care about me as a person. They're going to care about me as almost like a robot who can get the job done.
So when they're a bit like, Oh, we can offer, I don't know, health insurance or, you know, time off, or you get this amount of holiday, it just makes you feel a bit more at ease. I always say to my friends as well, you know, when you go in for a job interview, you're interviewing them at the same time, cause you're almost saying like, well, you want to employ me, what makes me want to come work for you?
Bryony Kingsland
That's a really interesting insight Kira, thanks. Rob, is there anything you want to add to that?
Rob Cotter
Yeah, so for a bit, when you're job hunting, you're looking at all different aspects, and I think the first paragraph that you read is the most important, because if you, if you sort of read an opening paragraph and you think, eh, I don't know about this, the chances are you're not even going to warrant looking at the rest of it.
Whereas if you've got sort of a really punchy opening paragraph, like work for us benefits, stuff like that. You more appeal to then carry on reading and find out a little bit more and then possibly apply.
Bryony Kingsland
Great. Thanks.
And there's one question that I want to ask you all, which I think is a really interesting one.
What would be your top tip for an employer was looking to recruit a young person into their workforce? And what would be your top tip for the young person? And if we can get to Rob first.
Rob Cotter
So, for the young person, go for it. Go for every opportunity you can. The worst thing that's gonna happen is that they're gonna say no.
It can be slightly heartbreaking them saying no, especially if you're, you're really interested and want that. However, just think about the experience that you've just been through. For an employer, somewhere along the line, you might have to lower your expectations. You've got to mold and seem appealing for the younger person.
Bryony Kingsland
Thanks, Rob. And Kira?
Kira Foster
I would agree with Rob, and to build on that for like employers to remember that their employees are human beings, and even though there is a hierarchy within the business, To see it as more of like you're working within a team. They're not there just to, you know, do all of your bidding.
But rather than to work alongside you as a team member. Yeah, obviously keep your authority. But yeah, stop thinking of them as ready made. And like Rob said, they're someone that you can mould to work for your business in the way that you need them to.
Bryony Kingsland
Thanks both. They were both really good answers.
Hilary, is there anything else you'd finally like to say?
Hilary Gwilliam
I'd like to give a tip. I would say to both parties, be open minded, be clear about your expectations, both sides, but be really open to learning about each other in the workplace or even in an interview, be prepared to tease that out of each other.
I think that's really important. And I think the most important thing as well for everybody to remember is that we're all lifelong learners. We've talked about being oven ready, but who's oven ready? You know, we're learning all the way through our careers.
Bryony Kingsland
I think I'd like to add to that, which is that side of the, of, of what we were saying about expecting young people to enter the workforce being oven ready.
The more I talk to various local skills improvement plans and providers and employers is the understanding that providers can do an awful lot and are absolutely brilliant at delivering employability skills and knowledge and critical thinking skills and project skills and digital skills to their learners.
But there's still a need inside the employer for mentoring for a young person that enters the workplace because they don't understand your workplace. They don't understand how your specific workplace functions. And so supervisors and managers are a really important aspect of any employer's business to be able to mentor young people as they enter the workforce and as they enter your particular place of employment.
Because actually, what you'll teach them as part of their job on a day to day and week to week and month to month basis is going to be just as important to them and you as what that young person learned at school, college or university.
Thanks ever so much, Rob, Kira, Hilary, for your expertise, for your insights, for your thoughts.
There was actually some really great answers to questions and some really great insights, so thanks so much.
Kira Foster and Rob Cotter
Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.
