As national reports spotlight the value of work experience in combating youth unemployment, a group of Oxford’s most talented young people are being put through their paces with one of the county’s leading employers.
Enthusiastic 14-17 year olds from The Oxford Academy and Gosford Hill School have spent an intensive and fast-paced week at Unipart Logistics’ site at Cowley .
It’s all part of Unipart’s Talent Factory – a national programme designed to spark talent in young people by combining top level sport with challenging work experience.
The Oxford programme was launched in April bringing Unipart together with partners Oxford United and The Oxford Academy.
The week-long programme has given young people an insight into the range of skills and knowledge that are needed in today’s globally competitive logistics environment. The activities have ranged from using The Unipart Way to solve real-life problems , to working with state of the art stock control technology, right through to high level briefings with Senior Managers.
Speaking about his experiences during the week, 16 year old William Levance said “It’s been a great week, I found learning about the finance side of things particularly interesting and using an everyday example to understand business finance really worked”
Both Tyla Peck, 14, and Jack Holland, 15 agreed that the problem-solving activities had been quite an eye-opener. Unipart’s Expert Practitioners coached the youngsters in how to apply a structured approach to a real-life example, using Unipart’s own powerful set of tools and techniques, a way of working known as The Unipart Way. Commenting on the process, Tyla Peck, 14, said “ It was amazing to see how using more people in the task stopped the flow and slowed things up – using fewer people and simplifying things really made it faster paced – it really surprised me”
Alex Wiggins, 17 from Gosford High School, was equally enthusiastic about his week long experience “the problem solving sessions showed me how to work as a team, how some really good communications and sharing the workload can really help to achieve the task.”
Talent Factory Project Manager, Chris Murphy, commenting on the week working alongside the students, said “Working with these youngsters has been a real pleasure – they have been excellent ambassadors for their school; their insights and enthusiasm have left a positive impact on the Expert Practitioners here at Unipart. We look forward to running more Talent Factory days and work experience weeks in the near future.”