Firms in Bristol’s creative and digital sectors are being urged to offer work experience to aspiring young people from the city’s less advantaged communities to help them pursue their professional ambitions.
The call has gone out from Babbasa, the Bristol-based social enterprise and established provider of professional mentoring schemes, career-orientated events and employability skills training. 
Babbasa’s work experience programme is specifically designed to anticipate and prevent problems that create failures for both employers and candidates during short-term placements at the workplace.
Its offer provides businesses with a structured work experience framework (if absent), a vetted pool of candidates (predominantly from low income and minority backgrounds) and a support package over the course of a period, for a fee.
Placements are typically offered for a fixed term of 35 hours, which can be delivered over a flexible period between one week to one month. Babbasa places and manages anything between one to 12 candidates in a firm, over a regular interval, in a typical calendar year.
Babbasa founder and CEO Poku Osei said: “For many young people, a work experience offer will possibly be the very first opportunity to explore future career options. It is therefore likely that they will need some level of support and training to prepare them for the workplace.
“For businesses, there is a growing interest to particularly offer opportunities to young people from low-income and minority communities but have no reliable method of accessing suitable candidates.
“We typically work with businesses to understand their industry and ethos before sourcing suitable candidates or designing a bespoke package. Where necessary, we assist in aligning their HR strategies, recruitment process and Inductions to ensure successful retention rates.”
The Babbasa package covers the entire process of pre-placement arrangements, during placement support and post-placement review and support, or can be purchased as separate services.
Babbasa also provides training/guidance for existing staff on cultural and behavioural disparities, where requested, to enable businesses to better support placed candidates.
For further information, visit http://babbasa.byep.org.uk or contact Poku at poku.osei@byep.org.uk
