Let’s Be Real
Hiring can be a human resources nightmare. For example, a new employee makes a solid impression in the interview, but then just doesn’t gel with your current team or your company’s way of doing things. Starting an internship program lets you benefit from added manpower, while more accurately assessing candidates.
The retail sector has an annual staff turnover rate of over 50%!
According to the International Longevity Centre UK [1], the retail sector has a very high employee turnover rate, with an annual rate of over 50%. It is also reported that many employees are not in the post even a year later.
This has multiple cost implications for your store, with the cost of hiring a new employee, with applications, interviews and training. It also wastes a lot of time for the managers of the stores, who need to arrange all these aspects within their already busy schedule.
The Solution
Supported Internships can help to reduce the expenses within a store in combating these high turnover rates. Firstly, by providing an intern for a year, which allows the store to test-drive both the programme and the intern themselves.
Secondly, it has been found that almost 40% of employers reported a higher 5-year retention rate of employees who were hired as part of a Supported Internship programme.
Retail Benefits
- Completely free for all business types to join.
- An expert Job Coach is provided, who will help to teach them the role at a pace that suits them.
- Support with making recruitment and on-boarding processes more inclusive.
- Free training for the store and employees on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to help them develop their understanding both within and outside of the business setting.
- Give back to the community – 92% of consumers felt more favourable towards companies that hired people with disabilities [2].
Check out what our partner businesses have to say about their experiences:
Transcript (click to read)
At ESS, which is part of Compass Group based at the Royal School of Military Engineering, the supported internship programme appealed to both myself and my team because it allowed us to train young adults within the local community valuable job skills and provide future employment for them. If we have a particular skills gap we need to fill, I will approach Forward to Employment who can provide a suitable intern, allowing us to bridge that need. Having 117 staff on site and six interns, it’s allowed me to focus on team development and full community support. Having been very sceptical when we first started and now having worked with Forward to Employment for the last two years, my team are very proud of what the interns have achieved and are achieving at present. It’s been fantastic, right from the very start, full support, given a job coach, Rob, absolutely supportive to the whole team, including the interns and current ESS staff, couldn’t ask for more. If you’re thinking of recruiting, you need to approach forward to employment. You won’t regret it, I didn’t.
Transcript (click to read)
Supported internships really appealed to Richard Austin Allies as a way to give back to our community. We had explored other programmes, but none offered us as a business as much support as Ford to Employment. It also allowed us to bring a relatively inexperienced young person into the industry and train them up into a model employee. Time is a valuable commodity to any business, and this programme allowed us the time to make informed decisions for both our company needs and the needs of our intern, all the while giving them experience in employment. Having A supported intern initially had very little impact on our business from the perspective that 42employment and their job coach did all of the heavy lifting and admin. Once settled though, our intern was able to integrate into the team and demonstrate a good work ethic. We were lucky enough to offer him a position at the end of the programme which was celebrated by the whole team having helped him along his journey. 42employment’s support is really comprehensive. Our team was offered disability awareness training and our assigned job coach was on site regularly to ensure everything ran smoothly. To anyone recruiting, I’d urge you to consider a supported internship. You’ve got nothing to lose and very likely a valuable employee to gain.
Transcript (click to read)
Luke: At ESS, which is part of Compass Group based at the Royal School of Military Engineering, the Supported Internship Programme appealed to us, both myself and my team, because it allowed us to train young adults within the local community valuable job skills, and provide future employment for them.
Helen: At Henry Schein, we’re always looking for ways we can extend our reach with underrepresented areas of our local community. And when we have the interns join us, we find that they immediately help us, look at things differently, solve potential business issues which we haven’t thought about, think about ways we can improve our processes. And at the end of the internship, we also get a really fantastic group of people for a talent pool, which is hugely untapped locally, and gives us a really great way for us to be able to look at furthering their careers, too.
Kieren: Time is a valuable commodity to any business, and this programme allowed us the time to make informed decisions for both our company needs and the needs of our intern, all the while giving them experience and employment.
Helen: Over the last five years, we’ve been able to support multiple internships, and it has been a real pleasure watching them grow, develop, and learn our processes and ways of working, so much so that they’ve become real guardians of our culture and our values and ultimatley act as role models for new starters in the business, and also for some of our existing Team Schein members, too.
Kieren: Having a Supported Intern initially had very little impact on our business from the perspective that Forward2Employment and their Job Coach did all of the heavy lifiting and admin. Once settled though, our intern was able to integrate into the team and demonstrated good work ethic. We were lucky enough to offer him a position at the end of the programme, which was celebrated by the whole team, having helped him along his journey.
Helen: Having interns in our business has really positively impacted our Team Schein engagement. We see that the managers and supervisors that work closely with the interns really develop as leaders, and the teams that work around them. We also know that everyone wants them to succeed, so it really helps bring them together.
Luke: It’s been fantastic. Right from the very start, full support, given a Job Coach, Rob, absolutely supportive to the whole team, including the interns and current ESS staff. Couldn’t ask for more.
Kieren: To anyone recruiting, I’d urge you to consider a Supported Internship. You have got nothing to lose, and very likely a valuable employee to gain.
Find out about how we can change your store’s employment retention rate:
[1] Emily Evans (2024) Retailers mustn’t forget their staff are their superpower – ILCUK, ILCUK. Available at: https://ilcuk.org.uk/retailers-mustnt-forget-their-staff-are-their-superpower/.
[2] Fact sheet 2: The benefits of hiring someone with a learning disability in your workplace (2023) Mencap. Available at: https://www.mencap.org.uk/resource/fact-sheet-2-benefits-hiring-someone-learning-disability-your-workplace.