Margherita Zorzetto, Head of Employee Experience, BMJ Group
Socio Mobility
Where you start in life shouldn’t determine your future, but often, it does. Socioeconomic factors play a big role in the opportunities we have. A school career counsellor made this point to me. Year after year, she sees middle-class students gaining valuable work experiences arranged by their parents, helping them develop skills and confidence. Meanwhile, the students on free school meals miss out. She told me it is palpable how this widens the gap between these two groups and depresses the ambitions of the kids who are left out.
When I heard this, I felt really proud that this year, at BMJ Group, we offered a work experience program for students on pupil premium. As a company that is dedicated to equity and social mobility, our work experience is a practical way to turn our commitment into action.
Planning
We started this project by getting in touch with local schools with a high pupil premium ratio. We chose to connect with local schools because we wanted to have an impact in our local community and because it would be logistically easier for the students to reach our office. We wrote a simple paper introducing BMJ Group, our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, and our ambitions for the work experience program. We then picked up the phone and called ten local schools. This cold calling resulted in follow-up meetings with three schools. In the following months, we worked with each school separately to plan their participation.
We decided to have two work experience cycles, each lasting one week. The program was strictly in person at our London office. We chose to have our program in person because some students didn’t have access to the technology needed to facilitate remote work experience and because we wanted them to become familiar with and comfortable in a corporate setting. A great deal of value hung on the students’ exposure to the working environment of the BMJ Group.
We hosted approximately 25 students from a mix of schools each week. Some were in Year 10 (14/15 years old) and some in Year 12 (16/17 years old). Many faced challenges such as mental health issues, chronic conditions, living in care, and learning disabilities. They came from families where parents did not have a secondary school diploma, let alone a degree.
Part of the preparation involved recruiting volunteers from BMJ Group and training them to handle the specific challenges of hosting this group of young students.
Implementation
Our ambition was to offer a work experience second to none. When the students arrived, they were greeted by a gift bag and a personalised booklet to guide them through the week’s activities.
To help the students settle in, we started with a career day. Each student was paired with a BMJ Group employee for a coaching session. Our colleagues used bespoke material to help the students identify their strengths and passions, with the aim of empowering the students to start their week with confidence. We hoped that receiving one-to-one attention would make them feel valued and seen.
Then, BMJ Group CEO Chris Jones led a group mentoring session, during which he candidly shared his own career journey, starting from when he was the same age as the students.
In the afternoon, they worked through an interactive CV-building session. Afterwards, they were paired with a volunteer to practice with interview role-plays.
For the rest of the week, they were assigned to various departments where they attended presentations, met team members and completed tasks to experience the work we do at BMJ Group. Each day they also participated in a special activity. For example, they had a mentoring session with three of our youngest colleagues, who shared their experiences of transitioning from being a student to the working world. And they took a historical tour of the heritage building where our office is located, complete with ghost stories and royal anecdotes.
On the afternoon of the last day, each group worked on a creative poster to summarise their highlights and learnings from the week. We ended with a graduation celebration. We invited their school staff and our leadership to attend. At the celebration, the students presented their reflections and answered questions. We wanted them to feel proud of their achievements, and each participant was recognised individually with a certificate.
Lessons Learnt
Here is an overview of the program in numbers:
We hosted 55 students, over two weeks, across 7 departments. The students ate 600 slices of pizza and 900 sandwiches. A total of 47 volunteers supported the program.
To evaluate the program, we asked a set of questions to the students on the first day and we repeated the exact same survey on the last. It showed that they had gained a great deal during their week with us. For example: on the first day, students rated their comfort level in a corporate environment as a 2.3 out of 10. On the last day, they rated it 8.2 out of 10. On the first day, they rated their awareness of their own strengths at 3.7. This score was 8.3 by the last day. Similarly, their knowledge of CV writing and interview techniques moved from 3.5 to 8.5.
The final celebration showed that many students had enjoyed their placement in their BMJ Group department, becoming attached to their hosts, and giving a fantastic final presentation.
The schools offered overwhelmingly positive feedback as well. Here is an excerpt of one:
Thank you for organising the week. We really, really appreciate it. Every student was buzzing about it like we never seen before. Everyone took a lot from the week. K. said that it had made him reevaluate his career choices and he is now considering marketing, R. said it had encouraged her too look into publishing and journalism… The staff thought the celebration event was wonderful … They were amazed to see how much the students had grown in confidence.
However, some of the students, especially in year 10, found aspects of the program challenging. Some reacted by becoming very shy and withdrawn, while others acted up – becoming disruptive at times. We were happy to see that every student, even those who had the biggest difficulties, had moments where they excelled. We’re committed to repeating the program with similar cohorts of students in the future, but we also learnt the importance of strong partnerships with the schools. All of the students from the school who briefed us about kids’ needs thrived. The students who found the program challenging were from schools where we had less information on how to best support students. Some pupils had been selected at the last minute and we were not informed about their, in some cases severe, needs. In the future, we will make it a requirement for the school to work closely with us to ensure that every student is supported throughout the program.
For more information about this program, please contact Margherita on mzorzetto@bmj.com
Declaration of Interests: Bev Acreman, Executive Director of UKSG is also Deputy Chair of the BMJ Group Board