Youth unemployment has been dominating the recruitment agenda in the past few months. The number of young jobless in the UK reached 126,000 in the three months to August. And a recent report from the Prince's Trust suggests the number of young people out of work for longer than two years had increased by 168%.
O2’s CEO, Ronan Dunne, expressed his concerns over the issue: "To me, these unemployed young people are one million digital natives who will be the key to making Britain digital. They are the future of our economy and we all need to act now to harness these skills and help drive our future growth.”
With these issues in mind, O2 has begun to tackle the ongoing problem of youth unemployment by playing its part in recruiting the next generation of young workers.
O2 recently launched its ‘Think Big’ campaign, which is part of the firm’s European CSR agenda: “Young people are full of ideas, energy and enthusiasm. But they need the right support to turn their ideas into reality”, its slogan reads. Its aim is to change the way young people think about themselves and their communities, and in turn, change the way young people are perceived.
The campaign consists of three elements: Think Big Learn, focusing on young people transitioning into the world of work; Think Big Enterprise, for young entrepreneurial talent; and Think Big Schools and Youth Project, which supports young people in making a difference.
Kate Bellew (pictured right) has recently been appointed as the Early Career Manager at O2, and will be working to recruit top young talent. O2 aims to double the number of young people in the company by 2015 across Europe and hopes to have 70 apprentices in the organisation by the end of the year. They are currently in the process of taking on 32 interns, with a further 19 starting last week. O2 also runs a two-year graduate programme, with the aim of recruiting 50 graduates in the next year.
“It’s important that our workforce mirrors the customer base that we serve to make sure that they’re provided with products and services that customers want,” says Bellew. “I think there’s a piece around innovation, and continually challenging us to think differently about how we work and what we provide to our customers.”
Bellew has also witnessed the positive impact that young people are having on the workforce: “We’ve also seen some improvement in existing employees’ performance in areas where we’ve injected the kind of enthusiasm and fresh new ideas. We’ve seen teams up their performance as well through the energy that they bring. I think there’s softer, less tangible benefits as well of bringing in new types of individuals,” she adds.
O2 has also recognised the important of younger worker’s digital skills. O2 research suggests that the unused digital skills of around one million unemployed young people are estimated by UK business to be worth £6.7 billion.
Over three quarters (77%) of the 400 UK businesses surveyed acknowledge that young people have digital skills in abundance but less than one quarter (24%) are planning to offer a first time job or an ‘on the job’ training role to a young person in the coming months.
"There is a massive youth unemployment issue and we are missing out on their digital skills. Young people come into companies with a lot of innovation,” says Bellew.
“I think traditionally we’ve been known as a mobile phone provider and we’re moving towards being a digital service provider. Given the fact that these individuals have grown up in a world that is digital – they’re what we call digital natives – they just live and breathe this stuff. So while we’re trying to challenge and train individuals we’ve got on board at the moment, these guys come with that kind of in-built knowledge,” she adds.
It seems O2 is beginning to make a big impact in this space but it is clear the organisation is setting itself some challenging objectives. “We need to put investment into making sure we’ve got the right people,” says Bellew. “We want to give them that outlook and make sure they want to be developed into the future.”
Source: 29th October 2012, AskGrapevine
http://www2.askgrapevine.com/news/hr/article/2012-10-29-o2-thinks-big-on-youth-unemployment/
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