Photograph: Pret
Pret A Manger has said it will now pay its 16-18 year old work experience candidates a starting hourly rate after reports it planned to “pay them in sandwiches”.
The sandwich chain released this statement after campaigners criticised the company for offering work experience roles for free food but no pay as part of recruitment drive linked to Brexit.
The Guardian reported that the sandwich chain hoped to solve its looming recruitment crisis by offering 500 16- to 18-year-olds a week of unpaid work experience.
Following backlash from social media users, many of whom threatened to boycott the stores, Pret’s CEO, Clive Schlee, tweeted that the company would pay all participants Pret’s hourly starting rate “and of course provide free food as well”.
Schee said:
“Pret’s work experience week is not about making sandwiches for free.
“We set it up so that 16-18-year-olds can shadow our teams and get a flavour of what working at Pret is like.
“We’ve seen how passionately people feel about the initiative, and in response I would like to confirm that we will pay all participants.”
Only one in 50 of Pret’s job applicants are born in the UK, so the company claims it is particularly exposed to the threat of non-UK workers leaving or avoiding the country in the wake of Brexit.
Participants in the ‘Big Experience Week’ would “get exposure to aspects of our business including food production, customer service, social responsibility [care for the homeless] and financial control”, the company said.
The company will be promoting the initiative through its school leavers programme. It will also run a social media campaign to catch millennial attention.
Andrea Wareham, Pret’s HR director, wrote in a blog on the company’s website:
“Attracting British applicants is not exclusively a Pret problem, and is symptomatic of a wider cultural bias. British schools and parents don’t always take careers in the hospitality industry seriously, but they really ought to.
“The industry has changed dramatically over the past 20 years and today it is strong, dynamic and growing.”
She said the company would find it all but impossible to recruit enough staff if it were forced to turn its back on EU nationals after Britain left the EU.
Pret said it hoped to offer permanent roles to anyone who wished to apply after their work experience week and would stay in touch with those who wanted to remain in education and apply in the future.
Rebecca joined the HRreview editorial team in January 2016. After graduating from the University of Sheffield Hallam in 2013 with a BA in English Literature, Rebecca has spent five years working in print and online journalism in Manchester and London. In the past she has been part of the editorial teams at Sleeper and Dezeen and has founded her own arts collective.
I strongly support Pret’s approach to providing a comprehensive work experience opportunity to any young person but do not support the need to pay them for the opportunity.
I feel we have lost the focus for this as being ‘work experience’. As a provider managing work experience placements for students both prior to leaving school, at college or at university, this welcome insight into the world of work adds value not just to the organisation they work for but for the young person who can get a snapshot of a view as to what the world of work is all about. I honestly feel that Pret have been backed into a corner that does not bode well for the wider offering of work experience which would not be paid for but has gone on for years.
I agree Julie! This was a one week initiative and could have been something incredibly positive to help some of the 826,000 NEETs we had on the last ONS count. It’s such a shame that we are not encouraging genuine work experience opportunities as I really believe they could help with unemployment and provide scope an opportunity for employees to find future talent.