Care Leavers Benefit from Novotel Work Experience
Many care-experienced young people face significant barriers to accessing traditional full-time work experience placements. These barriers can include adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma, speaking English as an additional language and limited opportunities to gain exposure to professional working environments. As a result, many care leavers miss out on valuable experiences that help build employability skills and an understanding of the workplace.
In response to this, we’ve recently partnered with Westminster City Council's Care Leavers Team and Novotel Paddington to develop a three-month micro work experience programme. The initiative has enabled two care-experienced young people to gain practical experience through short, focused placements designed to fit around their needs.
As a Grand Union BID company, Novotel Paddington hosted the participants between May and August, offering weekly sessions of two to three hours across a range of hospitality departments. During the programme, the young people rotated through areas including Food & Beverage and Reception, gaining first-hand insight into a variety of roles within the hotel. They also received support with CV development and job searching within the hospitality sector.
Spending two to three hours per week at our hotel helps young people gain a realistic understanding of what a career in hospitality involves, while building confidence, communication skills, and valuable exposure to working with people from hundreds of different cultures and backgrounds.
The project is a fantastic opportunity for our young people to work in a professional environment and gain valuable transferable skills that they can use in different settings, such as time management and communicating effectively with different people.
By the end of the programme, both participants had completed at least 30 hours of work experience and gained in-depth knowledge of key hospitality functions.
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with both young people reporting increased confidence and the development of key employability skills, including communication, customer service, teamwork and the ability to follow workplace routines and instructions. Participants also said that the programme improved their understanding of the hospitality sector and the career opportunities available within it.
If Novotel Paddington's micro work experience programme has inspired you, we would love to work with you to design, develop, and promote your own innovative work experience offer for the Paddington community. Please reach out to the team to start designing your own bespoke offer.