Podcast Episode 49. Job carving can help create sustainable employment opportunities according to this week’s podcast guest Neil Willows from Pure Innovations

Neil is the Assistant Internship Contract Manager at Pure Innovations which is based in Manchester in the UK. His role is focused on using supported internships to help young people gain work skills and find long-term employment. Neil explains how their supported internship programme works helping to develop real employability skills. They work with local companies to provide a range of work placements and job opportunities for young people. Ongoing support is also provided to the employer and their staff. Some have limited experience of working with young people with additional needs and so, having a support system really helps them ensure any issues are dealt with quickly and effectively.

Neil talks about how one of the most important aspects of this type of training is around building the young person’s confidence and allowing them to showcase their talent to employers. Whenever the young person experiences what might be a barrier to employment, they are helped to find ways to overcome it. The example Neil uses is a young person who struggles to tell the time which could then lead to them being late to work. Together with the young person they look at the best tools to use to overcome the issue such as using a mobile phone alarm or other prompts.

Neil also explains the concept of job carving. He talks about how it can sometimes be difficult to find suitable job roles for people with additional needs. However, through job carving where he talks to employers and helps them to identify new roles or to create jobs out of what was not previously a clearly defined job role. Many of these roles can be repetitive and so often suit young people who prefer a clearly defined role. In addition, they might be roles that the employer has not been able to define as a role because of the nature of the tasks required. Neil provides a number of examples of where job carving has led to long-term paid employment opportunities for young people.

Neil and Pure Innovations are not only helping young people build work skills and find jobs they are supporting employers by introducing to them the idea of job carving which can help them effectively fill a variety of job roles with highly motivated employees.