Help - Got to provide 1 day Work Experience for 2 year 9's

[AlexanderHamilton]

I work in an office of a heating company. We are a bit jack of all trades so we answer the phones, type invoices, chase late payments, process invoices & payroll.

I've just been told that one day next week we are going to have 2 year 9's in for the day from a local school (one of them is the daughter of one of the engineers)

What do we do with them? I've seen too many utter mind numbing work experience placements where I used to work where they made tea and nothing much else. What sort of thing would you expect/would your child be wanting?

I can't do anything payroll wise because of confidentiality and it has to be processed on a different day. I thought of saving the post from the day before so they could sort that (we don;t get much though its mostly emails). Then maybe save some delivery tickets and do some cross referencing.

Perhaps save some invoices and get them to enter them up and cost a couple of jobs up (labour, materials, add on profit to get to the figure we charge the client). They can't really type invoices.

What else?

How about a bit more of an overview of the whole business?
What the engineers do, how are parts stored/ordered/ appointments made etc
Any possibility of going out with an engineer.
Marketing/publicity/social media - could they design something for that?

I think very few kids have any idea of what job they want to do - even less of an idea of what jobs exist (I have a Y9 and a Y11!!) let them get a feel for general office work, and then if possible show them something of any other jobs connected with your company.

Ask them to review your website - could any of the text be better? Same with any social media channels.

The idea on invoices sounds good.

Perhaps ask them to do a Risk Assessment on a particular activity.

We don't really use Social Media. There is a website but an external company built it.

I'd have to ask one of the engineers about Risk Assessments. The problem being I never know if/when any of them are going to be in the office as they are out on site a lot (no under 18's allowed on sites). The father of the child is actually on Annual Leave that day!

We actually had to stop accepting work experience placements from kids interested in plumbing, heating, pipework etc as we are mostly industrial not commercial and under 18's are not allowed onto building sites (no-one is allowed on without half day proper site induction).

Could you ask them to research something vaguely related, most probably based on info found on the website given that they won't be there for very long? Maybe something like how you could make the business/office more environmentally friendly.

Help them do industrial espionage?
e.g. emailing a competitor asking for a quote?
Or just comparing with a competitors web site?

Some admin re late payments maybe?

Or creating an excel spreadsheet and graph of something:
e.g. over the last 6 months
£ paid on time
£ paid up to 14 days late
£ paid 14-30 days late
That would get them to use their IT skills.

Customer satisfaction emails or create a survey?

I think y9 is way too young. No way will my DD be ready in a year! Some of them will only be 13! The chances of them being able to do anything reliably and independently is small.

Jobs go out to tender Teen. We are issued tender documents by a Quantity Surveyor. It takes an engineer approx 3-7 days to put together a quote depending on the size of the job.

Small jobs (maybe a new boiler in an industrial unit) would still be in writing and possibly require a site visit unles it is purely like for like.

I'm the owner of a Year 9 boy myself.

To put it bluntly, imo there is nothing both useful & interesting you can give a random 13/14 yo to do in 1 day in an office.

So either you have to get them to watch you work, while you explain what you are doing and why
or you give them something interesting to them but of low value to keep them quiet (eg make a spreadsheet/graph of data)
or you give them something boring but helpful like filing.

My manager doesn't want them to come. My job is often repetive and boring but needs to be accurate. My boss doesn't even want them to do fiking in case they mis-file someting so I'm going to have to watch over them. I don't even know where they are going to sit!!

Perhaps whichever idiot altruistic individual who said they could come should oversee them?

If you don't have social media particularly, how about asking them to research and present a brief proposal on the top 2 or 3 things your company could do to make use of social media, in particular could it have been used in the last couple of weeks during the bad weather (don't know if you're in an area that was badly hit but hopefully they will be aware enough of the issues that some areas had in people not being able to get to work, no support from the main office, cancelling client appointments/repairs etc, contacting other members of staff.

Some kids of that age are already very into tech and social media and you might get something useful out of it - if not, you don't need to do anything other than say thank you very much. But it would be something to theme them looking at the day to day running of the company and what can happen when something happens to throw a spanner in the works, and what can be done to mitigate the problems caused.

So they might suggest a whatsapp group for your company for use during bad weather so that people can be updated if the main people can't get into the office to co-ordinate things, a public twitter account to let customers know that there will be problems but that is otherwise only updated every week or two with something general (uyesterday being a good example of being able to throw a tweet about nothing particularly about the company out - just to say a big thank you to all the great women that work for your company on IWD for example, or Happy Easter or that you'll all be at xxx conference) just to show that it's a live account.

Could they answer the phone? Then put the call through to you?

Do a bit of research on the best placement for radiators etc, best placement of thormostats.

Talk to them about tax and NI, how you have to deduct the money and send it HMRC. Talk them through VAT, VAT registration etc. Lots of teens don't know anything about tax.

Get them to price up a hypothetical job.

Do you have a company cheque book - teens don't know how to write cheques.

Make them do a report on what they have done in the day, overview of company etc. That will keep them busy for the last couple of hours.

You could give them some Health and safety info and get them to risk assess your office.

I know pretty much nothing about health & safety (apart from in a school environment as I used to work in after school classes) so I wouldn't really be able to talk them through anything.

Bunbunny - there are only two women in the company - me & the MD's wife!

Yes, we were hot by the bad weather and it was manic with breakdown calls from small businesses (if our vans could get through). The rest of our work was cancelled as the sites were deemed too dangerous (outdoors & working on a roof)

Teen - no-one said they could come. It was a fait accompli. The girl told her dad/us she was coming!!!

4 page checklist of H and Safety in an office - should keep them busy for a while. Once they have done it write a report and present it to staff - ie you.

intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/hr/documents/public/hsu/information/management/officeinspectionchecklist.pdf

just a thought, they can't file but they could put things in alphabetical order for someone else to file.

It was a fait accompli. The girl told her dad/us she was coming!!!

Erm, who is running this ship? Just say no. Has there even been a risk assessment for them being on the premises?

You need to have completed a risk assessment and if the parent is not there then whoever is assigned to look after them needs to have had an enhanced DBS check.

These are basic child protection tasks. Two 13 year old girls cannot just rock up with nothing in place. Heaven forbid if something happened to them on site.

Unless the parent is on site with them I would flatly refuse to let them be there.

DBS checks are not required for work experience placements according to the DfE as it isn’t deemed to be Regulated Activity. However in the office we have a theatre chaperone, a couple of football coaches etc

She’s got SEN so I think she wants to go somewhere she knows with people she knows.

Honestly if it is for just a day I would not worry too much about whether it is boring or not.

Could you get her to design signs for the office (something like please ensure photocopier is switched off at night), get them to do a stock take of office Stationary. Get them to research the price of something that the office needs.

The theatre chaperone and football coaches in the same room would reassure me. Where would the company stand if the girls were left alone with a single member of staff and the girls then accused that staff member of something? Unlikely but these things do happen. This is why so many companies do not take on work experience children sadly.

She’s got SEN

What sort of SEN? With SEN you really need that risk assessment, as you will have a vulnerable person in the office.