The Standard Issue 4 2022

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT:
WE HAVE THE INGREDIENTS,
LET’S START FOLLOWING A RECIPE.
Six years ago when I first moved
out into my own place, I was
living off the bare minimum. Like
many 18 year olds, my money was
spent on “socialising” or obscene
Amazon Prime orders instead of
on nutritious meals. I remember
talking to my grandma on the
phone one day about what I had
had to eat the night before,
“That’s right Grandma, cheesy
scrambled egg and bacon followed
by a bowl of plain pasta”.
After laughing, she stopped and
said, “Why didn’t you just make
something nice like a carbonara?”
What was she not grasping?
I only had pasta, bacon, some
cheese and an egg … not a
Schwartz carbonara mix in sight.
I have since learned (been made
to look up the recipe) that you
can make carbonara with pasta,
bacon, some cheese and an egg,
who knew?
In the last issue of The Standard
I wrote about youth employment
within our industry, about
shouting about ourselves more.
At the BICSc Exhibition and
Industry Insights Conference
I spoke about what we are missing
as an industry when it comes to
youth employment.
SO HERE IT IS, A FIVE-STEP STARTER RECIPE FOR
GETTING ON TRACK WITH YOUTH EMPLOYMENT:
1. UNDERSTAND THE NEEDS
OF YOUNG PEOPLE AND BE
ACTIVE IN RESPONSE
One of the best ways you can
start to understand the needs of
young people is by researching
the struggles facing young people
today. The Youth Voice Census was
published on the 6th September
2022. The census is the biggest
collection of youth voice and
insight in the UK. It provides a
unique understanding of the
experiences young people are
having in the systems around them.
READ IT HERE
The statistics that came from the
youth voice census are invaluable,
and should be utilised by potential
educators and employers to create
a better environment for the young
people they currently work with,
look to employ or young people
they wish to retain.
2. LEARN WHERE TO SHOUT
IN THE RIGHT PLACES
We are very vocal as an industry
in our own media setting. We have
many industry magazines, social
media accounts and events that push
opportunities, as well as development
programmes and innovations that
we have to offer. But we also need to
question whether this is something
that young people outside of the
industry actively know about.
To get our new generation, we need to
go to the places where young people
are looking. It’s researching where
schools, colleges, universities and local
governments are pushing younger people
to apply for careers, and understanding
what support is there for them.
Become not only an option for the
new generation, but a known option.
I did not lack the core
ingredients I needed for
a carbonara, I lacked the
understanding of how to make
a carbonara. I just needed some
steps to follow to reach the
end product. We as an industry
do not lack the tenets of great
employment, opportunity and
careers, we just do not understand
how to utilise what we have to
welcome the new generation of
cleaning professionals.
THE STANDARD