It is safe to say that 2022 has been a year of transition for Supplytrain, but we’re delighted with the progress we’ve made and the support we continue to receive as we pursue our mission of creating fairer routes into work.

The end of the Kickstart Scheme

In 2021, we were fully immersed in helping young people into work through the Kickstart Scheme and providing careers support to each participant, so they started their placement on the right foot and gained the soft skills to better move into sustainable employment at the end of the six months.
This year, the Kickstart Scheme came to an end, which is a real shame as it genuinely supported social mobility and provided the conditions for employers to give young people more time to get up to speed and have a positive impact in the workplace.
However, we are really proud to have supported 900 young people into work, as the largest Kickstart Gateway in the South-East, as well as being awarded the Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SME) Recognition Award at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Kickstart Awards in the summer.

Entry-level recruitment

As the Kickstart Scheme was winding down, many of the employers we worked with on the scheme asked us to continue to provide recruitment and mentoring services for them on a commercial basis, helping them find and nurture junior talent.

Pickfords, in particular, have been particularly supportive in helping us develop this service to work for large businesses working across multiple locations.

Now, our entry-level recruitment service is going from strength to strength. Unlike a typical high-street recruitment agency focused on finding experienced candidates, we partner with clients who are committed to recruiting for attitude and training for skill. This is often because there is a depleted pool of skilled candidates in the labour marketing, and a new approach is needed if our clients want the a thriving workforce in the future.

We find our clients committed, hardworking, junior talent that all want to work for a company that cares. We offer all under 25s 13-weeks free mentoring support upon successfully starting their new role. This mentoring support helps them settle into their new environment as they have someone impartial on hand to discuss any work, home, travel or mental wellbeing issues.

The impact is amazing too. We find young people taking the support are far more likely to still be in their job three months later, getting over those early work hurdles and better able to fulfil their in-work potential; whilst our clients are delighted with improved retention rates and satisfied employees.

To find out more about our recruitment support, contact us.

Managed Apprenticeship Service

We were also pleased to be approved by the Department for Education (DfE) to act as a Flexi-Job Apprenticeship Agency in partnership with the Mid Yorkshire Chamber this year alongside the BBC and NHS.

We know that small businesses in particular struggle to navigate the apprenticeship system and recruit apprentices with the right attitude for their business, so have developed a managed apprenticeship service that works for SMEs and large businesses alike.

As well as finding great candidates, we find businesses the right training provider for their needs, find an apprenticeship levy transfer, support them with adhoc apprenticeship queries and provide onboarding and pastoral support to each young person throughout their apprenticeship.

We’ve had amazing feedback on the simplicity and professionalism of this service from businesses and are looking to support more employers to outsource their apprenticeship programme in 2023 – whether that’s SMEs, schools, overseas companies or levy paying businesses seeking external support.

DfE T Level Growth Partner

In June we were also approved as a T Level growth partner for the DfE. Our job is to support and encourage SMEs to offer T Level industry placements in business operations roles, such as admin, finance or legal.

We’ve set up a separate brand to deliver this work, called the T Level Gateway  and are delighted with how many SMEs are interested in offering placements to T Level students.

Our team explain the pros and cons of offering industry placements and have an honest, impartial conversation with businesses. Those that are interested in moving forward we link them to a school or college local to them to pick up the conversation and help their students get the on-the-job experience they need to pass their course.

We recently had knowledge of our first industry placement start to come through the service, with many more expected in 2023.

What’s on the horizon?

We’d like to thank all our clients, collaborators, candidates and colleagues for working with us this year, and hope in 2023, that we establish Supplytrain as a can-do company committed to connecting caring companies to young people that are desperate for a fairer start into work.