Topic: Work Experience
Company name: BBC Radio Newsroom
Scheme partner: National Council for Work Experience (NCWE)

About NCWE
The National Council for Work Experience is part of HECSU, the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. It promotes, supports and develops quality work experience for the benefit of students, organisations and the economy.

About the BBC
The BBC educates, informs and entertains audiences across the UK and around the world.  It delivers news, sport and a wide range of information and entertainment via television, radio and the internet to millions of people.

Total number of employees
23,037.

Operational countries
BBC News has bureaux in Brussels, Delhi, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Moscow, Singapore and Washington with smaller offices around them in each region. We have newsrooms in towns and cities across the UK.

Challenge
Often work experience is marred with images of tea-making and filing, but this is not the case with modern work experience programmes.  Employers today face the challenge of implementing and maintaining a quality programme that benefits both the company and the individual. Structured programmes can enable companies to complete projects, recruit new employees and allow the student invaluable workplace experience.

Project name
Work experience programme.

Project manager
The work experience programme is administered by the BBC Work Experience Team in BBC HR Direct.

Responsibilities
The work experience team is in close and regular contact with BBC people across the UK who run work experience schemes. In 2007 they sifted nearly 30,000 applications and placed students in over 200 BBC departments across all regions of the UK.

Length of scheme
The BBC Radio Newsroom has been offering work experience placements since 2004.

Work experience structure
• The BBC offers approximately 200 different placements which vary widely.

• BBC Radio Newsroom offers a one week placement in London. Applicants apply online (via the work experience section of the BBC website). The team in Belfast produce a shortlist of suitable candidates and email those applications to the local scheme organisers (in this case the BBC Radio Newsroom team).

• A small group of senior journalists within this team then mark the shortlisted applications individually, according to an agreed marking system and then come together to compare marks.

Benefits
• The work experience programme enables the BBC to reach out and involve its audiences as a lot of young people participate in programmes close to where they live.
 
• The programme also enables the BBC to spot up and coming talent.

• In return the students get the opportunity to gain valuable insight into what goes on behind the scenes a one of the world’s most highly respected broadcasting organisations.

• The experience allows them to sample a career in broadcasting and decide whether it is a career they would like to pursue. If so, they are able to use their time to make contacts

Results
• A number of students have gone on to get paid work or training contracts with the BBC as a result of a successful work experience placement.

• The BBC Radio Newsroom won the trophy for the best work placement in the UK at the 2007 NCWE Awards.

• The BBC Radio Newsroom is a finalist in the ‘Public Sector’ category and the ‘Student Nomination’ category at the 2008 NCWE Awards.

Lessons
•  Having noticed that the majority of applicants come from the Home Counties of England and have a similar background, the BBC is keen to widen the net and attract applicants from across the UK and from a diverse range of social and ethnic backgrounds.

Future plans
• In 2008 the BBC has introduced a support fund to attract candidates who might feel they cannot afford the costs involved in travelling to a BBC centre some distance from their home for a placement.

• Successful candidates will be able to make a case for a payment of up to £250

Key tips

1. Ensure that you provide the sort of experience that you would wish your son or daughter to have if they were on a placement.

2. Nominate someone in your organisation who you believe will take the project seriously and who will have the necessary degree of influence to achieve the necessary ‘buy in’ from colleagues.

3. Ensure that a senior figure within your organisation takes the time and trouble to welcome the student at the outset and to debrief them at the end. You might get some very useful feedback that will help you to develop and improve the programme.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The National Council for Work Experience is part of HECSU, the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. It promotes, supports and develops quality work experience for the benefit of students, organisations and the economy. Its role includes disseminating information and good practice, encouraging the development of quality standards and encouraging more employers to provide placement opportunities. NCWE run an annual awards scheme to encourage and reward organisations that display good practice in work experience.


National Council for Work Experience and the Quality Mark accreditation scheme:
T: 0161 277 5267
E: workexperience@prospects.ac.uk
www.work-experience.org


ADDRESS:

National Council for Work Experience
Prospects House
Booth Street
Manchester
M13 9EP