Education and Employers

At an early age, many people are asked what they would like to do when they’re older. But how do you answer this when you haven’t been shown what’s possible?

In 2009, the charity Education and Employers was founded to help connect schools with a diverse range of employers who can enable young people to learn about opportunities available to them in the future. “It’s so important to introduce role models from the world of work to children at an early age to help motivate them, encourage them to learn and to broaden their horizons,” said Katy Hampshire, Director of Operations and Programmes for the organisation.

Education and Employers works in partnership with schools, colleges, employers, and the government to lead the way in getting more volunteers from the world of work into schools across the UK. Volunteers participate in a range of in-person and virtual activities – mock interviews, workplace visits providing insights on industry sectors, and becoming a school governor.

“Our research shows that if young people can recall 4 or more encounters with the world of work while at school, they are 86% more likely to go on to be in education, employment or training post-18, and will go on to earn 18% more (on average) than their peers,” said Hampshire.

When Education and Employers was established, the charity knew their entire service delivery would centre around technology. “When we were looking at a solution, we needed to make sure it was scalable and required minimal cost after setup to ensure good value for money which is important to our funders,” said Hampshire.

Education and Employers has a big reach but a small pool of dedicated resources. “We’re continuing to grow the number of schools that we are working with. We have a particular focus on high needs schools, so we’re ensuring that we’re putting our resources into those schools that need it the most,” said Hampshire. The organisation has over 73,000 registered volunteers, and collectively they have helped thousands of schools across the UK, supporting over two million pupil interactions since the programme began.

“Technology enables our small team to work efficiently and have reach in schools across the country that we might not have been reaching if we weren’t using a technology based solution,” said Hampshire. Through Salesforce, Education and Employers can connect schools, volunteers and governors (those who sit on school boards) securely, online, and for free, making the most of their resources.

Education and Employers had one thing in mind when developing their technology – making life easier for their users. Using Experience Cloud, the charity provides an easy interaction tool for teachers, volunteers, and governors who participate in their programme.

“Experience Cloud is the core of what we do. Using the flow component, we’ve been able to build automated workflows for our audiences with customised views and content that is relevant to them,” said Simon des Forges, Salesforce Manager at Education and Employers.

Teachers, for example can self-serve their entire experience on the platform starting with a simple sign-up form. Using tile menus for easy navigation in Experience Cloud, they can search for volunteers, raise cases to request a classroom talk, create and manage their own events, or dive into the curated content waiting for them at the click of a button. Personalised communications are also triggered throughout the customer journey.

“One particularly exciting feature is our volunteer search which is integrated with Ordnance Survey, mapping on our website. Teachers can search their local area for volunteers that are available to come speak at their school,” said des Forges.

Using Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, the charity has created the ultimate CRM, providing a unified view of all stakeholders and case management, enabling them to track content performance and how many young people it’s reaching.

The ability to report on the communities’ success is hugely important to securing funding from the government and private donors. It can also help to identify gaps the organisation needs to address – such as governor vacancies.

Real-time data reporting means the charity can place their resources where they need them the most – supporting schools and creating impact for young people.

By streamlining and automating tasks in the customer journey, the charity has seen huge efficiency gains.

“Salesforce makes us much more efficient. It has transformed life. It enables us to be very competitive when going for funding because of the analytical reporting that Salesforce gives us,” said Hampshire.

Innovating and Continually Improving

With Salesforce being an integral part of Education and Employers programme delivery, the charity is always looking to upskill and innovate – by exploring new solutions, updates, and product releases to continually improve their customer experience. “The continuous improvements by Salesforce provides huge scope for opportunity, particularly for smaller charities like us who have limited resources and allows us to build more solutions internally,” said des Forges.

Education and Employers is a UK-based charity launched in 2009 which aims to provide young people with the inspiration, motivation, knowledge, skills, and opportunities they need to help them achieve their potential.