Learn about Amey’s efforts to embed essential skills into its work experience and outreach programmes for young people.
Amey, a leading infrastructure services and engineering company, has been awarded the Silver Excellence Mark by Skills Builder Partnership. The award recognises organisations that demonstrate best practice in embedding essential skills – such as problem solving and teamwork – into recruitment, staff development, and/or outreach.
Amey first embedded the framework into their Kickstart programme, which aims to secure high-quality work experience and jobs for young people aged 16-25. Though this programme was supporting Amey to attract talent into the business and facilitate career pathways for the communities they work with, they also wanted a robust method to train participants in transferable essential skills and be able to track their progress.
Amey therefore worked with Skills Builder to implement a coherent, long-term approach to essential skills development and measure participants’ essential skills throughout their Kickstarter work experience. They then could support participants to continue building their essential skills, with the choice to either join Amey or transition confidently into the next stage of their career.
Due to the success, Amey then found ways to embed the framework into their outreach programmes, to ensure the young people had a meaningful experience and had the opportunity to reflect on their own skillset.
The Excellence Mark accreditation signals Amey’s achievements in boosting its Kickstarters’ essential skills and evidencing its impact. It will now continue to work with Skills Builder in 2022-23 to progress to Gold.
Sarah Hale, Social Value Manager at Amey, commented: “At Amey, we see the importance of ensuring everyone has the opportunity to develop their Essential Skills, whether that be employees or young people within our communities. The framework provides access to valuable and transferable skills, which are vital to an individual’s development, and it has enabled us to really demonstrate the impact of our programmes.”