About Employer Engagement
As part of our clients employment journey we regularly reach out to employers. We refer to this as Employer Engagement or EE for short. EE is about building relationships with employers with the goal of finding opportunities for our clients.
When we meet with our clients for the first time we discuss what their goal is and how to achieve it. From there our employment workers will approach employers on their behalf. Introducing the service and enquiring about potential roles for our clients. This method creates a direct line of support from our service to the client and the employer which allows everyone involved to get the support they need.
For employers this method of engagement helps bring them closer to the local community and find a more diverse range of talent with support they themselves might not be able to fully provide.
For our clients this approach cuts through some of the more stressful parts of finding employment and allows them to directly talk to the Employer about the issues they might face by creating a work plan that will inform the Employer of their needs and providing additional support to make sure they aren’t overwhelmed in the roles they apply for.
How do our other services approach EE
From an In-Work Support (IWS) perspective, a key role of EE is to equip employers with the tools, resources, and awareness necessary to support staff retention, even when employees face mental health challenges. Our IWS team is committed to building strong, positive relationships with employers and providing both proactive and responsive support. This approach empowers employers to implement collaborative support systems that promote employee wellness, address workplace factors that contribute to mental health concerns, and take positive actions to support employees with existing or emerging mental health needs. You can find out more about our
In-Work Support service by clicking here
Employer Engagement Working Well- WR’ Story
Finally we want to share with you WR’s* story. An example from our Thrive into Work Service about how engaging with employers can change someone’s life.
WR came to the Thrive service with hopes of becoming a nursery practitioner. With experiences of anxiety, depression and a diagnosis of BPD they had many barriers to overcome. They spoke often about feeling debilitated by their mental health and felt they lacked confidence to look for roles a feeling which had been impacted by previous experiences of unsupportive employers.
In their first meeting the Employment Specialist (ES) discussed the best approach to overcome these barriers and the different aspects of the job search: CV writing, making applications, employer engagement and gave advice on how WR could practice self-kindness through all of these – recognising the real impact of their conditions while also building a plan as to how they can be managed around the job search.
Working together they created a CV with the ES helping to tailor it to the childcare sector a line of work that WR had shown a particular passion for during their meetings. As part of this they also wrote a script to use when reaching out to employers to find out about potential job roles. This led to the ES securing an interview at a local nursery.
With an interview coming up they worked together to prepare including designing a task for the children that WR would present. As well as meeting with their potential manager to discuss reasonable adjustments to create an open, supportive line of communication should any issues arise in future. Thanks to their hard work WR was offered a role and has since been thriving at work and attests that they couldn’t be happier!
“You’ve helped me gain so much confidence within work and looking for jobs, I feel so much more comfortable in work knowing that you can help me discuss any reasonable adjustments I need at work.”
*Name changed to protect client anonymity