Healthy Business

Young people and business: a workplace education

Graduates and school leavers can often bring enthusiasm, fresh ideas and recently acquired skills to the workplace. But is the education system currently effective in making sure young people have the level of skills required to join the workforce?

Results from a recent survey carried out by the UK business education charity Young Enterprise suggest that there’s work to be done in this area, with 75% of the companies polled believing that education ‘is not equipping young people with the right skills’, while 59% “felt that the education system was poor at developing financial skills among young people”.

Asked which skills young people were missing, answers included ‘too many to list’, ‘literacy and numeracy’, ‘communication skills’ and ‘vocational skills’. Some of the UK’s biggest employers took part in the survey, which comprised of 700 000 respondents in total.

While there isn’t an immediate solution, Young Enterprise chairman Ian Smith believes that enterprise education should be on the national curriculum, with business staff being sent into classrooms to ‘help young people learn the work of work’.

What do you think business can do to help make sure tomorrow’s employees have the full set of skills required to perform in a competitive jobs market? If you’re an HR professional or the owner of a small business, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the survey’s findings, you can find the full survey results here.