Call for staff to join mentoring scheme and help tackle youth unemployment

Employee learning provider Inspire, Motivate & Engage is calling for more staff across the country to get involved with their mentoring scheme, and help tackle youth unemployment.

This call comes on the back of recent data from the Office for National Statistics* which shows that 975,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were classed as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training), although over half of them were actively looking for work.

Claire Atkinson, founder and CEO of IME explains how mentoring schemes can help to redress this problem: “There are thousands of young people across the country who are actively looking for work and desperate to get their first break. A mentoring scheme such as the one which we run at IME is the ideal way for people who are looking for a job or just starting out in their career to gain valuable knowledge and skills from employees who have years of experience. Mentors can come from all walks of life, whether they be managers, HR professionals, administrators or executives, everyone has valuable skills which could be passed on to benefit others. From application and interview advice, right through to supporting mentees when they do get a job, we have found time and again the relationship to be really beneficial to both parties involved.”

Inspire, Motivate and Engage’s mentoring scheme matches unemployed young people with people working in their chosen line of work, and they are currently recruiting for new mentors.

Claire continues: “We have young people across the country queuing up to join the scheme, so now we need suitable mentors to step up and help change a young person’s life. All our mentors stand to gain significantly from the process too, as they receive access to a level 4 accredited Management & Leadership course which imbedded into their mentoring experience.”

What’s more, the mentor need only contribute an hour a week, and mentor meetings can take place face-to-face, or online through tools such as Skype, so the scheme is 100% flexible around your day-to-day work. The scheme is ideal for people who are looking to boost their management skills, as well as to give something back through directly tackling youth unemployment.

Each party gets access to their own personal online mentoring portal and IME are there to ensure the process runs smoothly at every step of the way. So far IME have partnered with organisations such as Legal & General, Milkround and Skandia, and they are looking for more businesses across the country to join the scheme.

For more information about IME’s Employee Mentoring Scheme visit: www.inspiremotivateandengage.com/employee-volunteering/