Links with education “can boost business reputation”

Citation

(2005), "Links with education “can boost business reputation”", Education + Training, Vol. 47 No. 8/9. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2005.00447hab.005

Links with education “can boost business reputation”

Getting involved with education makes good business sense. A series of publications for employers, by the LSDA, shows how both public and private-sector organisations can boost their reputation, improve staff morale and help to make young people more employable by developing closer links with schools and colleges.

The nine publications, entitled Tomorrow’s Workforce, comprise eight leaflets on each of eight GCSEs in vocational subjects, plus a 24-page booklet that contains general advice on how businesses can support education. The subject-specific leaflets contain concrete examples, ranging from art and design to leisure and tourism, of how businesses have benefited from their links with schools and colleges and become involved with GCSEs.

The leaflets show how links with education can help companies by:

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  Raising staff morale. Working with schools and colleges helps to bring energy, openness and excitement into the workplace and encourage teamwork. Enabling staff to “give something back” helps to build a positive work culture and thereby to reduce staff turnover.

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  Helping to recruit staff. Building bridges with local schools and colleges helps to reduce the cost of recruitment and aids staff retention. Young people are attracted to organisations that have a good reputation and a perceived interest in learning.

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  Developing company culture. Companies have found that work with schools and colleges helps to raise staff morale and increase staff loyalty. Education projects can generate energy and enthusiasm in the workplace and help to build teamwork.

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  Enabling staff to learn new skills. Involvement in GCSE projects can provide exciting but low-risk opportunities for staff to develop new skills and show leadership potential.

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  Improving their reputation in the community. Being seen to be supporting education is a way of bolstering company reputation locally. Media coverage showing employers working with students helps to build a positive profile within the community.

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  Generating ideas for new products and services. Young people are a rich source of ideas and a useful sounding board for marketers who need to sell to the youth market. Many school and college projects have led to innovative suggestions for adapting operations, introducing new methods of working and creating new products and services.

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  Helping to gain and retain customers. Getting involved with education projects has helped businesses to gain new customers, increase customer loyalty and improve the company’s understanding of the attitudes and spending habits of children and young people. This is also good for the company’s reputation.

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  Influencing the curriculum. Helping young people to prepare for adult life helps employers to influence and support the curriculum in schools and colleges and thereby make it more work-related so that young people develop employability skills. Surveys of business opinions have found that many organisations support activities in schools and colleges because they want to help young people to increase their career awareness, improve their motivation to succeed, help them to understand how businesses operate and develop their employability skills.

The leaflets are one of a series of publications by LSDA as part of an extensive vocational learning programme for schools and colleges that are teaching (or intending to teach) GCSEs in vocational subjects.

Mike Cox, executive manager, vocational learning support programme, LSDA, said: “The benefits to employers of getting involved in education are numerous and many are building the need to work with schools and colleges into their corporate policies. While some see the benefits to the bottom line, there are many who want to create a better educated society.”

The leaflets were commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills. They can be downloaded from the LSDA website at: www.LSDA.org.uk/pubs