What is Green Work Experience?
April 2025
What is this document for?
This advice is for potential work experience providers who are unsure how to run work experience. This approach takes 6 students which works well and makes it easier for the school.
Key features
· Organisation takes 6 students at a time, a mix of male and female, but not just one of one gender. Friend groups are fine as long as it isn’t a group of 5 with one extra.
· Students do 4 hours per day for 3 days in a week (ideally Monday, Weds and Friday), and 2 days working from home. Hours are 10 – 2 or 11 – 3, including a half hour lunch break. With the additional cognitive effort of getting to a new place and coping with the new environment and people this is more than enough time.
· Their “manager” or “mentor” could be a junior member of staff e.g. a graduate trainee or apprentice.
· The organisation provides some student friendly information on the opportunity, and the students apply with a paragraph explaining their interest. The school may select or help select the students if needed.
· Students can do a project for which they can contribute a useful perspective. E.g. helping the company present themselves and what they do on environmental issues to a teenage audience.
· Focus should be on helping them develop skills around workplace behaviour, confidence, collaboration and effective communication, as well as learning something about a particular sector.
· Students are given a document explaining where to go, dress code, an outline of what to expect, and a contact in case of difficulty.
· Mentor models friendly workplace behaviour, and treats the students as individuals with respect and as inexperienced adults rather than children e.g. shaking hands, making eye contact, being friendly and welcoming, and never criticising or humiliating them.
Example schedule
Day 1:
1. Mentor meets the students, welcomes them, learns their names, and helps them relax. Don’t rush it.
2. Mentor explains a bit about the organisation and what it does, and what their job is, and gives a brief introduction to what the week will entail. NB Students will be overwhelmed and won’t be able to absorb much information at this point. Make it light and chatty. Be willing to repeat through the week. A site tour could come later when they have relaxed a bit.
3. Mentor runs an induction explaining appropriate and effective approaches to working in a professional environment, making it conversational, asking them about any work experience they have had already. Include DofE, volunteering, helping at school etc. Draw out the skills they have developed in doing this.
4. Students have lunch. Mentor leaves them alone for 30 minutes with instructions about what to do in an emergency.
5. Students are given their task for the Tuesday – to create a presentation on the environmental issues in the sector the organisation belongs to. Students could do one slide each on a different aspect. One student volunteers to take the role of project manager and editor to bring it all together. The students will present their presentation on the Wednesday morning. The mentor suggests some sources of information e.g. industry websites. If this is done before a site tour it gives some focus for a tour.
6. Students have a tour of the site if appropriate. NB they may be shy about asking questions, but encouraged to do so and praised if they do, but not criticized if they don’t.
Day 2:
1. Mentor runs a conference call at 10am with the students on Google Meet (that is the system they are most likely to be used to) or other platform, to ensure they understand the task for the day, and are feeling confidence to do it.
2. Students work together either at school or online.
3. Students can email questions during the day before noon, and the mentor will aim to answer before 1pm.
4. Mentor checks in with them online at 2pm to see if they have any questions. Mentor should not pressure them or worry if the work is done or not. They can learn to take responsibility. Failure is learning!
Day 3:
1. Students arrive in time for a 10am start. Mentor meets them and welcomes them. The students should be feeling more confidence by now.
2. Students are helped to set up for their presentation. It’s done fairly informally.
3. Students present what they have done to their mentor and ideally another staff member.
4. Mentor and staff member gives feedback on the positives, and some suggestions. Not a full blown critique.
5. Students are able to experience something of what the organisation does, in as practical a way as possible. This could include sitting in on a meeting, on reception, or in an operational area. Separating them into twos / threes to be in different areas of the business. Best not to have them singly.
6. Students are given a task for Day 4. This will be creating another presentation on what the company does, it’s environmental issues and what it is doing about them. One slide per students, and one manager/editor (a different one to the previous time).
Day 4:
1. Students work from home or school as a team. No check ins from the mentor but they are available to answer emails if needed.
Day 5:
1. Students do their second presentation back to the mentor and ideally someone else from the company and have a discussion about the environmental issues they looked at and give their views on how to present this to a teenage audience. The mentor aims to get useful information on how to reach a teenage audience so that the students are contributing something of value.
2. Mentor runs a debrief against the issues covered in the induction. Students have time to do their own review of how they did. This has their names on it and the mentor takes a copy to use for feedback to the school.
3. Students then they give feedback on their work experience week anonymously – using What Went Well and Even Better If. If this is in their own words it can be more useful than box ticking.
4. It’s great if there is something fun and relaxed to finish with. E.g. if the company has a end of the week activity.