This guidance is available for mentors considering organising a work experience for their mentee directly through their place of work, but we advise that individuals and organisations seek their own legal and HR advice.
What kind of work experiences can mentors provide for their mentees?
We define 'work experience' in four ways:
- Visits - the young person is given a tour of a workplace and talks to colleagues
- Shadowing - the young person observes different workplace tasks over the course of a day or two
- Insight weeks - the young person is given hands-on work experience over several days
- Paid placements - any paid work engagement
These experiences can be online, on-site, or hybrid (a mixture of the two).
Paying expenses and wages
It is important that we do not expose our young community to negative financial impact, or promote unpaid work. Our Organisational Code of Conduct outlines that for unpaid work experience, we recommend allocating £15 a day for lunch and travel expenses, and that any work experience that lasts longer than five working days should be paid the Living Wage. A young person should never be doing unpaid work that is actively contributing to running of the organisation.
Do I need to report on the experience?
Please provide us with information about your plans ahead of the experience, ideally with a couple of weeks to spare - you do this through the mentor report, clicking 'provide work experience' and filling out the details. This is so we can review these plans and make sure everything's in place for a great time - including talking to parents/carers if your mentee is under 18.
After the experience, we'd just ask you to fill out your standard mentor report as normal and let us know how it went.
What information do mentors need to provide?
The key pieces of information that the form will ask you to provide are:
The contact details of yourself, your mentee and the organisation
The dates you’re looking to host your mentee
Confirmation on whether it’s online, on-site, or hybrid
General details of the tasks and activities involved
We advise that every work experience has a formal risk assessment to explore all the risk factors at play and mitigate these were necessary. When working with under 18s, there should be clear procedures to ensure their safety and wellbeing. You can download a risk assessment template and read our safeguarding policies.
Organisations should also have Liability Insurance to cover compensation in case of any injuries or illnesses as a result of activities undertaken during this work experience. As a rule, where 'work' in any form is being undertaken, organisations should have Employers Liability Insurance, whereas in the case of visits or shadowing, organisations may be covered by Public Liability Insurance instead as there is no 'work' occurring.
Need to contact us?
Please get in touch with your regional Officer, or email the mentoring inbox: mentoring@arts-emergency.org