First steps in planning a placement

Before offering a full in-person work experience, some potential providers may find it useful to organise a group trip, such as a farm walk. This will enable potential providers to meet and build relationships with schools or colleges in a scenario where the school carries out most of the planning. 

After deciding to offer a work experience placement, it can really help to spend some time thinking about the following points: 

What do you want to offer?

Is it one or two weeks of school work experience, work shadowing, college block or day release work experience, etc? 

Make the links with schools and colleges

Set up a meeting or arrange a phone call to outline your proposal and clarify and agree on the offer and both parties' objectives and expectations. 

Consider formalising roles

Consider creating a formal recorded role with agreed responsibilities, activities, and objectives to be achieved or completed throughout the placement.

Determine who in your business needs to be involved 

Many permanent employees really enjoy the presence of younger people with new ideas and experiences on the site. 

Health and safety processes need to be checked, and appropriate risk assessments carried out

See later sections of the toolkit for links to risk assessments and safeguarding guidance.

Determine the lines of communication that will be maintained between the school, the young person, and yourself  

Different educational establishments have different processes, so it's important to check the lines of communication between the young person, the school, and yourself before the placement starts. 

Plan out a full induction  

This should include a farm tour for the student and preparing your team to ensure they also convey high standards regarding farm safety/maintenance and knowledge transfer.  

Review the experience after it's finished to identify lessons learnt 

This reflective process should improve the experience in the future and give the student things to take away and consider before entering the world of work. This part of the process will often be mandatory, and the school or college will provide you with a form to complete in relation to the student(s) you've hosted. You can download a  Workplace evaluation form if you haven't been provided with a form from the school or college. 

For more advice and help planning a placement, you can use our Work experience checklist and the associated Work experience checklist guide to help you follow this process, ensuring all the above steps are followed and the relevant decisions are logged.