Employer Engagement or EE for short allows us to build relationships with employers with the goal of creating opportunities for our clients.
When we meet clients we work with them to figure out their employment goals. From there our employment workers will approach employers on their behalf. Introducing the service and enquiring about potential roles for our clients. This creates a direct line of support from the client to the employer allowing everyone involved to get the support they need.
For employers this 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 cuts out the stressful parts of finding employment and allows them to directly talk to potential employers about the issues they might face by informing them of their needs and the support they might need to thrive in their place of work.
Offering In Work support
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. We’re committed to building strong, positive relationships with employers and providing both proactive and responsive support. This approach empowers employers to promote wellness, address workplace factors that contribute to mental health concerns, and take positive actions to support with existing or emerging mental health needs.
While all our services offer In Work Support for Tower Hamlets based employers we offer a dedicated In Work Support service as part of our Employment Hub team who are able to provide more detailed support. To find out more about this service please click 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