Sheffield businesses should not shy from opening their doors to young people on work experience, says expert
Sheffield businesses should not shy from offering work experience to young people
Andy Burnham has urged UK businesses to follow the example of Sainsbury’s after the retailer announced 10,000 work experience places to tackle youth unemployment.
The Prime Minister said the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) is a “huge challenge” which employers need to help address.
It comes as figures revealed Sheffield has one of the highest rates in England for 16 and 17 year olds doing nothing to gain new skills or a job.
In 2025, a count estimated nearly 800 teens in the city were classed as NEET, and potentially 200 more are simply “not known” - meaning they do not even engage with authorities to say whether or not they were in school or training.
One Sheffield champion of work experience is Karen Mosley, former president of Sheffield Chamber of Commerce and now the social impact and inclusion director at HLM Architects, who got her start at a youth training scheme when she was 17.
Karen, who sits on numerous work employment boards nationally and locally, says businesses have everything to gain from creating work experience placements - but many Sheffield companies feel they are “too small” to offer a meaningful placement.
“We need to open our doors to young people and welcome them in,” said Karen.
“Don’t let the fear that you must provide something big keep you from providing something meaningful.
“We [HLM Architects] get great satisfaction and joy from supporting and meeting young people, and helping them into opportunities.”
She added that one issue affecting many UK sectors is that young people don’t aspire to enter some industries because they are entirely ‘back-of-office’ where they can’t be seen.
“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” said Karen. “We have loads of important sectors entirely in back offices where young people cannot meet them and aspire to it.”
Scores of initiatives exist in Sheffield to help businesses create and plan work experience placements.
‘See It Be It’ is a council-operated campaign to help companies set up placements and link up with schools to grow young people’s career aspirations.
The 'You're Hired’ toolkit is a training package developed by Sheffield's Voice and Influence team with financial support from businesses to help employers better understand and support care-experienced young people.
Each February, the FORM Career Expo is held at the former Coles Brothers building for students and graduates to explore careers in design, architecture and planning.
The Sheffield Pride of Place ‘Opening Doors’ campaign champions inclusive recruitment and removing barriers to getting underrepresented groups - such as young people - into work.
Sheffield Futures is a local young people's charity that exists to support young people living in Sheffield “to live happy, healthy lives,” including careers advice.
Meanwhile, Sheffield City Council is set to unveil a landmark strategy to tackle the city’s NEET crisis at a meeting on September 2.
The city ranks 11th out of all local authorities in England for the number of 16-17-year-olds classed as NEET in 2025 - 7.7 per cent.
The highest rate was West Sussex at 9.7 per cent, or around one-in-10 young people.
On Wednesday (August 26), Mr Burnham hailed Sainsbury’s for pledging to create 10,000 placements for young people in deprived areas.
“This is a really positive development today,” he told reporters on a tour of Sainsbury’s Nine Elms.
“One of the biggest British brands out there, Sainsbury’s, coming forward and saying 10,000 placements for young people, work placements, apprenticeships. This is exactly what we need.
“We need a national drive to challenge youth unemployment and give more opportunities for our young people, and I would ask other businesses to do the same.
“I think we need to fix the education system [...] but then we need employers to step forward and offer those work placements too.”
The Prime Minister last month unveiled plans for new technical education routes for 14-year-olds that will be put on an equal footing with traditional academic pathways.
The latest data, published in May, showed the number of young people aged 16-24 neither working nor learning surpassed one million – nearly one in seven – for the first time since 2013, reaching 1.01 million in the three months from January to March.