In her column for the Caerphilly Observer, businesswoman and Welsh ICE director Mandy Weston takes a look at the Jobs Growth Wales scheme.
It is great to hear that in celebrating its first anniversary this week, the Welsh Government’s flagship enterprise scheme Jobs Growth Wales has also smashed its initial target for the creation of job opportunities for young people by 50%.
Deputy Minister for Skills and Caerphilly AM Jeff Cuthbert said whilst visiting those who have benefited from the scheme, which supports unemployed people aged 16 to 24 in finding work, that it is playing a major part in reducing youth unemployment and has outstripped plans to create 4,000 job opportunities in the first 12 months by creating almost 6,000.
Welsh Government funds wages for up to six months with a view to ultimately creating longer term posts. Here in Caerphilly the council also offers a passport scheme, which supports four types of placement for young people ranging from unpaid opportunities to paid positions for graduate level employees, as an added bonus too.
From a small business perspective, both processes have been made very simple, with a broad choice of partners available to deal with the administration on your behalf. This allows you to interview as many candidates as you like and offering invaluable support to many local companies I’m aware of.
Here at Welsh ICE we have one Jobs Growth Wales candidate, Huw Williams, working for the centre directly and at least another four helping out member businesses including Solviq IT, which was the centre’s first company to pursue it.
Just to make it clear, we simply do not know what we would do without Huw – he has brought a wealth of social media, document production and general administrative skills with him and really supported us at a time of ongoing and rapid expansion.
For Solviq, Julian Luxford’s input has also proved himself such a vital part of company founder Steve Talbot’s plans for growth that he has now taken Julian on as a full-time apprentice.
Two further businesses, including my own, are also planning to recruit young people through the scheme, on my part to help maximise on our social media activity – a skill perfectly suited to candidates aged 16 to 24 – and I hope to learn as much from them as they can expect to from me.
In fact the only draw-back to Jobs Growth Wales, were I pushed to find one, is that it excludes a huge amount of experienced talent out there that have suffered from redundancy or are return to workers over the age of 24.
But with a further 12,000 positions set to be created over the next three years, it would be nice to think the success of Jobs Growth Wales in its first year is just the beginning for growth elsewhere.
Excellent news for the apprentice at Solviq and they should be commended for taking a young person on.
I can't quite fathom why Mandy would be looking to recruit through the scheme when they already have a candidate that excels in the skills she is seeking. Do they only get one round of six months free labour or is the role at Ice a paid one?
Would have been nice to know how many of the near six thousand opportunities had transpired to actual jobs too.
I've had three JGW staff and they have worked well, two have now gone onto study and one has stayed with us permanently . My worry is that many young people who have had an opportunity haven't been kept by the company because they then have to employ them rather than fully funded. How many will have actual jobs in five years time? Here's hoping