Introduction
The decision to undertake a placement year is a complex one. Students must weigh up opportunity and risk to find a balance between fear of failure and the desire for success. The students who were in the middle of their placements, as the first lockdown was announced in March 2020 were part way through an intense experience. Many were at the point of their roles where they were starting to spread their wings and seek out additional challenges. This blog will reflect on how we provided support to our students in two academic years of 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 affected by pandemic, and how we adapted our existing models of support to ensure that students remained connected.
Context
As the University performed its relatively graceful speed pirouette to a new way of working and teaching, our students on placement were having to adapt once again to a ‘new normal’. They had already demonstrated their ability to move from academic to professional life, now they were part of the biggest shift to remote working ever seen. Students were working for a wide range of organisations, some of which already had some work from home structures, others were building those from scratch. It is well documented that the more senior staff in organisations had the greatest resources to draw on, with spaces that were relatively easy to convert into home offices. Many of our students are still living with families so in addition to their professional challenges they were also expected to support siblings and parents. This meant that they had to be good negotiators; both with teams and managers who needed them to continue to deliver their work at the pace and standard required and with their families to ensure that they had space/time to focus. For some the stress around them was acute, the drop in family income because of either furlough or job loss was mitigated in some cases by their income, but the emotional pressures were significant. Others were competing for workspace and broadband access with parents who were also suddenly working from home. Some of our non-UK students were torn between wanting to remain here to continue their placements so that they could go back into the office quickly if the lockdown lifted and wanting to be with their families at home.
Supporting students on placement in lockdown
Into this context we had to balance the twin responsibilities of placement tutors and placement officers; to ensure that our students were well and to ensure that their placements continued to run smoothly. In the Greenwich Business School our undergraduate placements are credit bearing and students must complete a monthly reflective blog. These are an essential part of our contact with students and gave both sides a framework to maintain contact in a relatively normal way. The themes of the blogs covered challenges such as supporting team members with new technology, redesigning processes so that they worked remotely and the personal challenges of lockdown and covid. For many of our students, physical restrictions meant that their normal stress relief of regular gym sessions were closed. Working from home, particularly when you are out to impress in the hopes of a graduate job offer can make taking breaks very hard and it took time for our students to find a rhythm and equilibrium. There were several reports of students realising that they were working extended hours, for example.
For some, it was a real opportunity to shine. One of the placement students working in the NHS had built a solid reputation as a hard worker with a good eye for detail and was working increasingly independently in his finance role. He’d discussed in pre-pandemic blogs about how some of the processes he was working with seemed to be not as flexible or technically agile as they could have been. He has a good understanding of technology and so volunteered to help his team move online; teaching colleagues how to remote access systems and getting Zoom established for team meetings. He relished the visibility this gave him and how it put him into the centre of the team and was able to bring forward some of his improvement ideas. He was also an example of the ‘give back’ approach, volunteering to go into the hospital he was based at to hand out hot food. He was justifiably proud of the part he played and found that experience very moving.
Supporting the next wave of placement year students
Alongside keeping the students already on placement connected, the next wave of students were applying for placements. They navigated changed recruitment processes, ably supported by the Business School Employability Office (BSEO) team. Although they had spent some of the academic term working remotely, facing online interviews and assessment centres to complete their recruitment was an additional challenge. For those already holding offers as lockdown came into force there was uncertainty about whether their placement roles would be happening and whether they’d be working remotely. The BSEO changed their workshop and 1:1 provision to online delivery and enabled students to feel prepared for the challenges awaiting them.
Onboarding into a new role with the constraints of the pandemic was a real challenge for many of our students. One of placement students said that she had a courier deliver a laptop to her. She sat at her coffee table and opened the lid, and then wondered what she was expected to do next – would it be a ‘Mission Impossible’ setup? Another student, very keen to demonstrate his commitment, set up a tent in the loft so that he could have a dedicated workspace away from his parents` workspaces. This generation of students are often chastised for wanting everything handed to them on a plate and needing too much hand holding; these students stepping into these placements demonstrate that is not true of all of them. They had to learn a new job, integrate with a new team, and navigate new systems largely independently; they all deserve to be very proud of their approach and success.
The BSEO maintained close contact with students through monitoring their monthly blog submissions and identifying students who might need additional support, then working with the placement tutors to deliver that support. Placement tutors had to do visits with employers and students as video calls, the employers really appreciated our checking in with both sides. Our students have risen to the challenge, and with excellent support have continued to impress employers, with graduate job offers starting to come through.
We’ve worked strategically this year to continue to encourage students that a work placement for the 2021/22 academic year is a valuable use of their time. One way we have done this has been engaging with employers and running sessions for students to attend around their future career prospects and options. We’ve found that students feel much more confident and are more likely to apply for roles at a particular organisation if they have met with an employer and had the opportunity to ask questions. One recent example was through our partnership with Northern Trust when we had over 40 students join the call and 38 applications. This is the highest number Northern Trust have ever received from Greenwich students and is testament to the appetite for placements from our students. We continue to engage with students and employers alike to build these connections and develop opportunities for our students.
What we’ve learned:
- Our students are resilient and adaptable, appreciating clear guidance and an open channel of communication.
- Although they didn’t all have the technical skills needed to go fully remote, they gained them rapidly.
- Networking is possible when doing a placement in lockdown, but it needs strategy and support.
- Pre-departure help and guidance is essential for success – students using Outlook for University email will have one less new thing to learn!
It is hard to do justice to the combined level of work that has gone into supporting students on placement, and to preparing the next wave who are currently starting their roles. It’s a true story of effective academic and professional services collaboration delivering excellent experiences for students. And as we start to look to a time beyond Covid and wonder how the world will be shaped, it is good to know that we have the next generation of managers already under development with a proven ability to respond to a fluid situation, identify priorities and build connections, whatever the circumstances. Truly our time to be “#ProudtobeGRE”.
Blog Authors
Katherine Leopold
Senior Teaching Fellow
Department of Accounting and Finance; Department of Economics and International Business
Greenwich Business School
Luke Fairbrass
Placements Officer
Business School Employability Office
Greenwich Business School
Dr Agnieszka Herdan
Associate Professor
Department of Accounting and Finance
Greenwich Business School