“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” - Gandhi

I have volunteered for a long time in PTFA and Governor roles, and when my children went to high school, I found myself not being allowed to do those volunteer roles anymore as such parental involvement is not allowed at high school!

I have to respect their wishes, so I took the opportunity to do something different.

I had had my eye on the Enterprise Adviser role for some time as I first found out about it through my CIPD membership. It felt aligned to my HR work as it was an opportunity to bridge the gap between education and employment and help young people through CV and interview preparation. Event management arranging things such as careers fairs and building relationships and networking with local businesses to attend such and to open up the doors for work and volunteering experiences, which is all right up my street.

Then an added inspiration was when I offered a PRU (pupil referral unit), that felt even more aligned as challenges happening at a young age that continued to impact in adulthood, has been a massive part of helping staff in my HR capacity through long term sickness, sporadic sickness and, conduct issues. So if I can help just one young person, then I might just be helping them to create a better future for themselves and a fellow HR colleague.

I do get asked what it is like to be an Enterprise Adviser, usually coming from a concern point of view of what we are expected to do. But in my experience, we are able to play to our strengths.

The school do an amazing job at pushing the boundaries and providing the best opportunities for the young people. So I don’t need to be an educational expert. I take guidance from the school of what they would like to do, and we work out the wish list for the academic year, from that, we establish what I can do to help (as noted above in bold).

It is always good to know how the day to day activities link in with the overall strategy and the schools need to demonstrate achievement against the Gatsby Benchmarks and the Skills Builder. At first, I didn’t have a clue what those meant, and I sat in early meetings, thinking oh wow, this is a different language, but after a couple of years of dipping in and out of them and having regular reviews with the school, its like anything else, it starts to make sense.

From a time perspective, once I know what needs to happen for the year, I can then work back on what action I need to take. I am always at networking events anyway for my business, so building this in to that conversation is easy to do. I always have 121 follow ups with the people I need to following the networking events anyway for my business, so again this is part of the diary commitments and I generally do that over a couple of days in the month. Logistics can be a challenge as work requirements for business owners/employers coming into school can change, and as this is all voluntary, it will be the first thing to go, which we totally understand. So having a wide network is very helpful and they are amazing and jump in when they can at the last minute. Aside from that, we pivot, we improvise and we do the best we can.

The sense of achievement is just immense when an event and/or activity has been completed, knowing that enrichment has been added into the young peoples understanding and decision making. It is a challenging setting and not as straight forward as mainstream school, but that makes it all the more satisfying. I learn so much from the obvious about the education side of things, but also about the importance of listening to the younger generation - they are our future and things are so very different for them today, in comparison to when I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s. We know as adults that being included in conversations and decision making, we respond so much better. We feel included, we feel respected, we feel valued. So doing the same for the young people is a stepping stone into setting them up for future success.

If you are exploring the possibility of becoming an Enterprise Adviser and have questions, please do get in contact if you want to chat more. There is more information on the scheme here.

I will leave you with this, Be the change you wish to see in the world - Gandhi

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss volunteering further, please do get in touch - we love to help with all things people management related.