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Employers are key to shaping the future workforce as they continue to engage with schools and colleges. When young people connect with a range of employers in meaningful ways, they acquire essential skills, expand their networks, and gain insights into the evolving job market.Ìý

For businesses, the benefits are clear. Effective education outreach helps to close skills gaps and diversify talent pipelines - both of which are essential in addressing skills shortages and opportunities, especially in growth sectors. We can see that employers that invest over the long-term in well-structured, high quality outreach gain a significant advantage by supporting the development of a skilled and diverse workforce and saving on recruitment costs.

The Employer Standards provide a clear framework to maximise the impact of employer engagement with young people, ensuring mutual value and long-term business success.

Launched in 2023 by The ÌúÅ£ÊÓƵ & Enterprise Company, the Employer Standards aim to improve the quality and impact of employer engagement in careers education. As of September 2024, 811 employers from a wide range of sectors and sizes had self-assessed against the Standards, including a cohort of 139 who re-assessed their impact. This significant and growing national dataset is clearly demonstrating the value of high-quality engagement and the business case to do more.

Insight 1: School outreach works: strengthening talent pipelines, closing disadvantage gaps and saving moneyÌý

• Providing meaningful opportunities, such as careers talks, mentoring and workplace visits, leads to more sector interest, applications and closing skills gapsÌýÌý
• Engaging parents, teachers and underrepresented groups helps improve early career recruitment, workforce diversity and develops new talent pipelinesÌýÌý
• Outreach leads to direct business benefits (particularly for Cornerstone Employers) and reduced costs, with ÌúÅ£ÊÓƵ Hubs driving improvementsÌý

Insight 2: Sustained engagement and higher quality outreach lead to longer-term benefits, especially in key sectorsÌý

• Those providing meaningful opportunities over the long-term report the most significant business benefitsÌýÌý
• Employers repeating Standards assessments take a more long-term approach, are more inclusive, provide more opportunities and see more business benefitsÌý Ìý
• Health sector employers score above the average across all nine Standards; Construction and Digital higher than average across eightÌýÌý

Insight 3: Employer Standards highlight common challenges and opportunitiesÌý

• There is more to be done to prepare young people for application processes, evaluate activity and measure the value of careers engagementÌýÌý
• Greater engagement with parents benefits both businesses and studentsÌýÌý
• Cornerstones and other employers who collaborate with ÌúÅ£ÊÓƵ Hubs are leading the way

As highlighted in our main report, key sectors outperform their peers. The industry insight reports below provide more detail on the areas in which the digital, healthcare and construction sectors are leading the way.

• Digital
• Healthcare
• Construction