Operational Plan

Support young people and adults to make positive transitions into education, employment or training, including apprenticeships and understand the skills required to succeed in the labour market and contribute to the future economy of Wales

All young people in attendance at mainstream schools will receive an offer of a guidance and coaching interview from us. The offer will be made via a range of channels, for example in assembly, form groups, partnership agreement with the school, automated text messages and individual contacts where necessary. Support can take place anytime between Year 9 and Year 11 and we aim for at least 80% of young people to have received a guidance and coaching interview by the time they leave compulsory education. Interviews will be delivered one-to-one and in small groups.

We will offer all schools two assembly sessions, one for KS3 and one for KS4, to raise awareness of the offer and cover topics requested and agreed with individual schools.

Career Check will be offered to all schools to aid with prioritisation and data gathering. This will support us to identify which young people are:

• Unfocussed
• Seeking an apprenticeship
• Talented but underachieving
• Labour market entrants
• Lacking in confidence or motivation to make things happen
• Unrealistic

We will deliver targeted 1-1 interviews during the Easter Term for young people seeking to enter work or training after Year 11, culminating in the completion of Assessment and Referral Reports for the Jobs Growth Wales+ programme or support with finding work.

Working Wales advisers will support young people seeking employment or self-employment opportunities straight from Year 11 with referrals to Working Wales undertaken during the Summer Term.

Guidance and coaching interviews will be provided for those young people in Post-16 education requesting support.

From September we will pilot the use of a new online booking system for FE Learners who will be able to book their own appointments as well as college staff being able to book on their behalf.

Careers Advisers will follow up current Year 11 young people identified as Tier 4² once they have transitioned to 6th form or FE.

We will offer a group session to all sixth form schools, with priority given to learners who are looking to enter the labour market.

² Young people in EET (Employment, Education or Training) but in danger of dropping out.

Digital and communications

In order to improve the customer experience, we will continue to better align employability activities across both Connect and Working Wales as well as continue with the roll-out of the workstreams on:

• Rapid response guidance
• All-Wales digital employability sessions
• Call routing (separating admin and careers support calls)
• When an Employability Coach is not available in a centre; the smooth transfer through to Connect

We will release phases 3 and 4 of Future Job Wales which will see us add the remaining 12/13 industries/sectors to the website, completing the whole package for our customers to use to inform their decision-making.

We will develop a proposal for the further development of our Job Search facility on the website and plan this into the roadmap accordingly.

Using the research, testing and evaluation activities from our website ‘plan for future workstreams’ we will prioritise the remaining digital roadmap for 2024 to 2025 and beyond. Strands of work include personalisation and customisation (including AI); getting a job tools; decision-making tools and skills assessments.

We will design and deliver campaigns which take account of changes in our offer across all services. These will still support transition points and promote our services to our key customer groups including young people, parents, employers and those in the labour market. A key focus of the year will be to roll-out as part of the FE/post-16 campaigns, the use of the OASIS framework and the integration of behavioural science to support more effective and impactful campaign activity.

We will action improvements to the working patterns within Job Information identified in 2023 to 2024 and review the subjects and articles elements of the application to identify gaps and improve accuracy for our customers.

We will continue to develop and refine the My Future strand of the website including the production of further About Jobs videos.

We will review and update groupworks, re-packaging them as off the shelf resources for teachers to use.

Key Performance Indicator

95% of pupils who receive a guidance and coaching service enter education, employment or training on leaving school.

Customers who have benefitted from enhanced levels of support make positive transitions into appropriate provision.

Targeted Group Support

Targeted Group support will provide young people who may be under-represented in Employment, Education or Training (EET) with additional Careers Adviser time.

We will offer targeted support based on individual characteristics:

• Free school meals
• Looked After Children
• EOTAS (PRU and Alternative curriculum)
• At Risk of becoming NEET
• Young Carers
• School Action +
• Poor Attenders
• English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)
• Labour Market Entrants

It is estimated that the above groups will represent 30% (approx. 10,800) of the cohort. Further guidance and coaching interviews will be delivered on a needs-led basis using our Careers Advisers’ professional judgement.

Education Other Than at School (EOTAS)

Analysis of destination data shows that young people accessing EOTAS provision are more likely to become NEET (Tier 2 and 3). We will provide additional support for EOTAS young people, involving earlier intervention in Year 10 and transition support during Year 11.

Home Educated (EHE)

We will offer guidance and coaching support to all known young people who are educated at home.

We will meet with every local authority to offer our service and discuss the best approach for each local authority, where possible this will result in a service level agreement.

With the support of our Digital and Communications Team, we will deliver new digital events for EHE customers.

Additional Learning Needs (ALN) Support

The ALN Model will deliver support to young people who have moved to the ALNET support as well as those who remain under the old SEN system.

ALN customers will continue to receive:

• Offer impartial guidance and coaching support
• Attend transition reviews for young people with Individual development plans (IDPs), with priority given to young people entering the labour market.
• Deliver group sessions
• Attend parent events
• Provide CWRE Support for the school to embed the new curriculum across the school
• Facilitate Employer engagement activities
• Provide support to Local Authorities in implementing the Transition support
• Initial interactions will begin at a point agreed with the school for each individual learner
• Interactions will include group and face-to-face to introduce the role and concept of thinking about the future, making decisions etc
• We will aim to attend a review in the year of first meeting the young person to introduce our role to parents. If a review is not attended, contact will be made with parents.

We will deliver ongoing support, potentially up to six years in the case of someone staying until 19 if support is agreed to start in Year 9 or 4 years if support starts in Year 11. This could consist of group sessions, 1-1 guidance interactions, accompanied visit to a provider, advocacy and liaison on behalf of customers following guidance interviews or transition reviews and attendance at final year review for those entering EET or those who are still undecided. We will attend at least one review in interim years.

Young people 16-17 in the labour market (NEETs)

Responsibility for the provision of support for Tier 3 customers (Unemployed 16 and 17-year-olds who are NEET but actively seeking EET) sits with Careers/Working Wales. Support is also offered to those Tier 1 (Young people whose whereabouts have become Unknown) and Tier 2 customers (Unemployed 16 and 17-year-olds, who are not available or unable to access EET) referred to us by the Youth Service or other agency nominated by the local authority Engagement and Progression Coordinator.

The offer for young people in the labour market is aimed at supporting them to make informed and effective decisions in order to find appropriate learning, training or employment and will include a range of employability support options including:

• Vacancy Bulletins
• Support with job-search and applications
• Advocacy and liaison with relevant partners to ensure smooth transitions
• Referral to appropriate provision

Employability coaches will provide those 16+ with job search, CV and other support at first point of contact either digitally via our Careers Wales Connect service or in-person at careers centres and Job Centres.

Supporting Young People in the Secure Estates

Careers Wales will continue to work with Youth Justice Board and Welsh Government (WG) to support young people who are placed in secure estates by:

• Supporting them whilst they are in the secure estate to agree a plan for their release and to ensure successful progression
• Making contact with the young person or their Youth Justice worker within 10 days of the notification of release
• Offering a blend of support incorporating group sessions, interviews, signposting and referral to appropriate employment, education or training

Key Performance Indicator

85% of young people who receive targeted support enter EET on leaving school.

Raise customer awareness of EET and other progression opportunities.

Opportunity Awareness is a key skill for effective career planning and is a feature of one-to-one guidance and coaching interviews, group sessions and employer events.

Many of the Digital and Communications developments outlined under Strategic Outcome 1 are designed to raise customer awareness of EET and other progression opportunities.

We will undertake user research with Careers Advisers to better understand the relationship between our LMI resources and the use of LMI in guidance interviews to improve the customer experience.

Key Performance Indicator

90% of young people in education report raised awareness of opportunities.

Improve access to the benefits of careers guidance and coaching support through collaboration and engagement with partners and influencers.

Partnership Agreements

We will negotiate a Partnership Agreement with all mainstream and special schools as well as Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) (neither PRUs nor FE colleges are counted in the KPI).

Work with Parents/Carers

We will continue to develop our parent strategy to achieve our 4 goals:

• Engage parents earlier on in their child’s academic life
• Engage with parents in targeted groups as set out in Brighter Futures
• Improve our reach to ALL parents, particularly via digital means
• Better engage parents in influencing and shaping the development of our services

This will be achieved through:

• Attending targeted parent evenings in schools
• Connecting with parents of young people in the Targeted Groups to follow up actions
• Engaging with parents through community groups via our social media presence
• Developing communication material that can be shared with school governors
• Carrying out user research and evaluation on the parents’ section of the site in order to continue to develop our Parent section on the website
• Developing the school parent newsletter
• Attending at transitional reviews
• Piloting the delivery of a virtual regional Careers Wales parent evening/event.

Key Performance Indicator

Partnership Agreements with 100% of partner organisations that enable improved access to the benefits of careers guidance and coaching.

Inform and motivate young people about the world of work through engagement with employers and role models.

Primary Schools – Introduction to careers and work-related experiences (CWRE)

As part of the Big Ideas Wales contract, an enterprise challenge will be delivered in primary schools through Cazbah, our contracted partners. This will be offered to all primary schools and includes promotion and marketing of the challenge, the delivery of five regional professional learning sessions for teachers and a series of five regional showcase events. The showcase events are for participating schools to share their experiences, showcase their projects, sell their products and take part in business-led learning experiences.

Secondary Schools

We will offer mainstream schools bespoke employer engagement support with the aim of informing, inspiring and motivating learners about career opportunities and embedding CWRE in the curriculum through employer led activity. The support will be based on the needs of the school and their specific curriculum requirements.

We will aim to deliver on average five single employer events per school (presentations, visits, specific curriculum inputs etc) and at least one multi-employer event per school (carousel/world of work days, speed networking etc). This will be offered as part of a menu approach. This work will be prioritised in years 7-11 and can include a mix of face-to-face and digital delivery.

We will continue to offer schools access to the Education Business Exchange (EBE) database which enables them to search for local employers. We will review EBE during the year and conduct a ‘soft’ relaunch with targeted marketing.

We will continue to deliver a national, Welsh in the Workplace large scale event aimed at highlighting the value of Welsh in the labour market and the range of jobs available.³

In order to continue to move employer engagement beyond a traditional, stand-alone approach, we intend to develop a series of curriculum related challenges. These challenges will be development projects involving a major employer from each of the nine Welsh Government Key Investment Sectors, the relevant sector/industry body and a teacher who is able to translate key messages from the sector into curriculum delivery through the most relevant AoLE. In doing so we aim to produce a blueprint for the development of curriculum specific input, using a collaborative approach that meets the needs of schools and employers and produce a bank of challenge resources that can be replicated or amended. As the challenges are developed during the business year, we will ask each Business Engagement Adviser (BEA) to deliver at least one challenge each in one of their allocated schools.

We will support the new ‘challenges’ initiative by developing a new sub-brand and creating a variety of assets, content and resources. The new initiative will be promoted and communicated to all key audiences.

We will continue our support for the Valued Partner Initiative (VPI) in schools. This initiative seeks to formalise relationships between schools and key local employers. In line with the drive to develop more innovative, curriculum-based approaches to employer engagement, BEAs will be tasked with producing one case study each to support the sharing of best practice (27 in total).

We will aim to use VPI to develop other mutual beneficial work between schools and employers, most notably teacher encounters. We will provide BEAs with a list of ‘approved’ teacher encounters, as evidenced in a recent WG commissioned research project, and ask them to use VPI to facilitate these encounters, where possible.

We will continue to offer schools support to develop alumni communities and use alumni as employers to support EB work in schools.

As part of the Tailored Work Experience programme, we will place 250 eligible learners from priority schools across five clusters in Wales. The schools will be identified using free school meals (FSM) and attendance data, supplied by Welsh Government.

The clusters will be:

• Swansea and Carmarthenshire
• Neath Port Talbot, RCT and Blaenau Gwent
• Merthyr, Torfaen and Powys
• Newport and Cardiff
• Anglesey, Conwy and Gwynedd

We will continue to deliver activities to promote entrepreneurship as part of the Big Ideas Wales contract. Our team of Entrepreneurship Advisers will use a network of entrepreneur role models to deliver 1,000 workshops in secondary schools across Wales. The aim of these sessions is to inform and motivate learners to consider self-employment and business start-up.

Special schools / PRUs

Recognising the diverse needs of special schools and PRUs, we will continue to offer these settings a bespoke employer engagement service. Based on data from previous years we aim to deliver 160 activities across 80 settings.

We will continue to host four regional ‘What Next’ large scale careers fairs for ALN learners. We will review the format of these events during the year to ensure they are focused on the career development needs of these learners.

Support for employers

We will host a Valued Partner awards ceremony to celebrate the contribution of employers and raise the profile of the work employers do with schools and young people.

We will explore the potential to develop a set of agreed employer standards in Wales to help employers maximise their ability to effectively enhance the delivery of CWRE in schools. This is likely to take the form of a pilot development with a group of influential employers, supported by CPD opportunities to promote and circulate.

Digital and Communications

We will release the new partnership development with Visit Wales within CareersCraft, which supports young people to learn more about the hospitality and tourism sector and apprenticeships as an option. We will investigate opportunities for further developments with other partners.

Key Performance Indicator

CW facilitates at least one employer engagement event in 95% of secondary schools in Wales.

³ It is important to note that we will not be delivering large scale ‘Choose Your Future’ events during 2024 to 2025. A survey of schools during 2023 to 2024 indicated that it is more difficult for schools to access these events due to transport costs, curriculum pressure and staff cover, and this is evident in attendance figures at several events. This decision is also supported by the desire to focus more on bespoke, curriculum embedded engagement rather than stand-alone events.

Raise young people’s awareness of the skills required by economic priority sectors and how they link to the curriculum.

The actions lined out under Strategic Outcome 5 also apply to Strategic Outcome 6.

Enhance the capacity of schools and Careers Leaders to deliver CWRE within the Curriculum for Wales.

Our CWRE Co-ordinators will continue to offer secondary schools, special schools, PRUs and Further Education Institutions (FEIs) a bespoke consultancy and training service that engages a target of 1,700 teachers. Our focus in the main will be on those schools working towards the Careers Wales Quality Award (CWQA), though we will offer a bespoke consultancy service to secondary and special schools on a request basis.

Our offer to primary schools will consist of referral to online resources and our professional learning (PL) offer below.

We will deliver a programme of online PL to schools and settings across Wales. A calendar of PL opportunities for 2024 to 2025 will be offered to schools, alongside an application or expression of interest system to recruit teachers for each training session or course. The proposed sessions will support schools working towards CWQA and provide other schools with practical support to develop their CWRE curriculum.

Topics for live online PL sessions to include:

• Developing a CWRE policy
• Planning, reviewing and evaluating CWRE in the curriculum
• Auditing CWRE in the curriculum
• Embedding CWRE in AOLEs – professional discussions for teachers (secondary only)
• Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
• Using the Careers Wales website and resources (primary)
• Using the Careers Wales website and resources (secondary)
• Using the Careers Wales website and resources (special)
• Careers City

Online courses to include:

• NAEL endorsed, OCR accredited Careers Leader qualification (level 6) delivered to a cohort of approximately 15 teachers during 2024/25.
• Careers in Your Curriculum (primary)
• Careers in Your Curriculum (secondary and special schools)

We will continue to develop resources that support schools to deliver CWRE. To supplement the calendar of PL opportunities, we will continue to provide a range of asynchronous learning resources, such as playlists and videos, to support teachers with the delivery of CWRE in Curriculum for Wales.

New resources to be produced include:

• How to establish Careers Champions in your school
• Realising CWRE in the curriculum
• CareersCraft

These resources will be housed on Hwb, and individual teachers will be referred to specific resources as training needs are identified.

We will continue to pilot the new Careers Wales Quality Award (CWQA). The focus of 2024 to 2025 will be on taking schools through to Stage Two of the CWQA with a target completion date of July 2025. An additional six schools will begin Stage One of the award in 2024. This will ensure a rolling programme of new entrants for the award.

Key Performance Indicator

Training or consultancy support to improve CWRE programmes is delivered to teachers in 70% of the secondary schools in Wales.

Deliver personalised, customer-centred services, enhanced by technology, responsive to user needs and accessible to all.

In 2024 to 2025 we will:

• Improve computer access within our centres for Guests/Customers/Outreach/Events using Windows 11
• Deliver a self-service facility on the Careers Wales website for customers to book their own appointments with a careers adviser (releasing for Working Wales customers in May 2024 and FE customers in September 2024).
• Explore the possibilities available for further website personalisation and customisation via alternative headless Content Management Systems (CMS)
• Review the wider roll-out of WhatsApp as a channel for Connect and refinement of A365 contact centre features to ensure a good quality customer experience is achieved
• Develop a test strategy for automating the back-end testing of our products on the website to be more efficient, improve the consistency of products as well as improve the customer experience
• Use the findings from the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) audit to deliver an action plan of recommendations that will improve our website’s content and presence
• Run a full site accessibility scan, developing and implementing an action plan as required
• Further progress our work on website personas, user journeys and journey mapping to further align our services to customer needs and behaviours
• Continue to develop the customer’s profile on the website by integrating developments into relevant applications / phases on the roadmap

Key Performance Indicator

85% of customers report that their needs were met by our Careers Wales Connect service.

Create a highly skilled, engaged, diverse and agile Careers Wales workforce

In 2024 to 2025 we will:

Audit existing activities and channels, seeking employees’ views and putting a proposal / recommendation together for an improved internal communications and engagement offer.

Continue with our change communications plan around budget reductions, leading into communications around the new company strategy from 2025 onwards so employees are informed and able to feed into longer-term goals.

Roll-out and embed new company brand guidelines so there is clarity for employees on our brand and visual identity.

Focus Learning and Development activities on:

• Continuing to deliver “brilliant basics” that enable new employees to become productive in the minimum possible time, all employees to be compliant with legislation and legal guidance, and all employees having the core skills, behaviours and knowledge required for their roles
• Developing the skills of our managers, so they can lead a culture that is outcomes-focused, promotes collaboration across hybrid teams, engages employees, supports employee wellbeing and is able to cope well with rapid change
• Developing the digital skills and capability to take advantage of new technology, harnessing it to improve internal business processes, engage our customers and deliver technology-enabled services
• Developing soft skills in all our employees that enable them to be resilient and agile in a rapidly changing workplace
• Developing the knowledge, behaviours, and skills of colleagues so they are able to provide high quality services based on current insights and ensure Careers Wales is a trusted partner organisation
• Continuing to develop our Welsh language skills as a bilingual organisation

Key Performance Indicator

100% of trainee careers advisers successfully complete their level 6 diploma Career Guidance and Development within the two years allocated.

75% of employees report positive levels of engagement with the company.

Optimise our use of technology to transform our ways of working and develop the digital skills and capabilities of all Careers Wales employees.

In 2024 to 2025 we will:

• Increase automation of a range of infrastructure processes that currently require manual intervention for example staff on/off boarding, deployment of equipment, data quality, secure upload from third parties
• Future proof through the decommissioning of on-premises datacentre and migration of services to cloud. This will reduce the capital requirement to refresh hardware at the end of its support cycle, offer improved flexibility around Careers Wales premises, reduce utility costs and allow for scaling of resources through a consumption-based model

Improve navigation of current bilingual resources.

Provide regular content on new Microsoft features, potentially using AI/Chatbot to increase support requests relating to functionality or ‘how to’ to support continued improvement of digital skills across the company.

Set up an AI working group tasked with identifying four AI-related projects (two aimed at customers and two aimed at employees) that we can take forward from 2024 to 2025 onwards. Projects will improve customer experiences and allow employees to work more efficiently.

Review connectivity across delivery locations to identify issues and any improvements that need to be made.

Carry out an independent review of our website architecture to ensure we have a robust, efficient yet flexible system with supporting processes in place and action recommendations accordingly.

Continue to take forward the results of the Digital Skills Survey completed by all employees in the second year of Brighter Futures and develop the digital skills and capability of employees to take advantage of new technology.

Key Performance Indicator

Improvement in the digital skills and capabilities of Careers Wales employees.

Inform our strategy, policy and service developments through customer insight, business intelligence, data and analytics.

In 2024 to 2025 we will:

• Establish a task and finish group to define requirements, scope the resource and timeframes for bringing website data incrementally into the customer CRM. We will evaluate at each stage and progress within GDPR requirements
• Review and evaluate current data analysis processes and standards across company, including the data warehouse architecture, developing a ‘data dictionary’, and reviewing business process, and increasing awareness of the focus of existing reports.
• Increase our media relations and public affairs activity generally and in particular through an increased use of case studies, increased local/regional stories and PR-driven content on key digital developments such as CareersCraft partnership launch with Visit Wales
• Monitor the impact on our social media engagement as we reduce activities such as events that generate high levels of engagement and take action accordingly
• Produce an annual web metrics report and monitor the impact on web usage on key tools such as Career Match Quiz (CMQ) and Buzz Quiz when they are no longer delivered via group sessions in schools from September onwards, making recommendations accordingly
• Carry out company-wide user research activities to support new areas of service provision, understand the impact of reductions in service provision and to help us plan for the next Careers Wales strategy