Opening doors: helping more young people discover a career in food
Opening doors: helping more young people discover a career in food
Starting out in work can feel daunting. Stuart Lee, Group Head of Talent and Development at Samworth Brothers, looks at how meaningful work experience can help young people build confidence, discover new opportunities and take their first steps into the workplace.
Starting your first job has always been a big moment. But for young people entering the workplace today, the landscape is changing quickly.
Almost a million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are currently not in education, employment or training. At the same time, technology, AI and automation are changing the nature of many entry level roles and the skills businesses will need in the future.
For Stuart Lee, our Group Head of Talent and Development, these aren’t separate challenges.
Our industry needs its next generation. And there are young people in the communities around us who may not yet realise the opportunities that exist within food and drink.
That is one of the reasons Samworth Brothers is supporting IGD’s Feeding Britain’s Future, which aims to equip young people to work and progress within the food industry and ultimately provide experiences of work in every secondary school by 2030. FBF Toolkit
But creating opportunity means doing more than simply opening the door.
Making that first experience count
Work experience can be one of a young person’s first encounters with the working world.
Done well, it can help them understand what work is really like, build confidence and discover careers they may never previously have considered.
That’s the thinking behind a new Samworth Brothers work experience programme planned for 2027.
Our ambition is to welcome our first students next year, initially creating more than 20 placements across our sites, with the programme designed to grow over time.
Each placement will last a week, but we want the experience to start before a young person arrives on site.
Students will work through short workplace basics on their phones, covering simple but important things such as writing a good email and knowing what to expect during their first week.
It means nobody should have to walk through the door completely cold.
Once they’re with us, students will meet our Early Careers team, tour one of our bakeries, take part in a taste panel and develop skills such as presenting.
Then they’ll get closer to the work itself.
Depending on their interests, they might experience several different departments or spend more time exploring a particular area such as product development or engineering. They’ll have the opportunity to work on a real project and present what they’ve learnt back to the site’s leadership team.
At the end of the week, they’ll also explore the wider food industry through IGD and, importantly, understand where they could go next.
Because a good work experience placement shouldn’t simply end on Friday afternoon. It should leave someone with a better idea of what might be possible.
Showing young people what’s behind the food
One of the biggest opportunities is simply showing young people the variety of careers our industry has to offer.
Food manufacturing may not immediately spring to mind when someone thinks about a career in technology, data, science or engineering.
But take a look behind the scenes and there’s a very different picture.
Across Samworth Brothers there are bakers and production teams making the food millions of people enjoy, but alongside them are engineers working with increasingly automated production lines, food scientists and technologists focused on quality and safety, and chefs developing new products.
There are also people building careers in supply chain, commercial, finance, IT, data and HR.
Think of almost any career and there’s a version of it here, just with food at the centre.
Helping young people see that breadth matters.
They don’t necessarily need to leave a placement knowing exactly which career they want. Giving them the opportunity to discover something they didn’t know existed can be just as valuable.
Creating clearer routes in
Work experience is one part of a much bigger picture.
Our plans for 2027 are about creating clearer routes into Samworth Brothers for young people, whatever their starting point.
That includes work experience, T Levels, industrial placements, apprenticeships and graduate schemes.
We’re also working with the Youth Employability Hub in Leicester to reach young people who are currently out of work or education.
And those routes shouldn’t stop once someone joins us.
As roles and skills change, the people already working across Samworth Brothers need opportunities to continue learning and developing too.
Whether someone is 16 or 56, the principle is much the same: help people understand where they could go next and give them the opportunity to build the skills to get there.
Investing in our future workforce
Feeding Britain’s Future is ultimately about helping more young people experience the workplace, build skills and see a future for themselves within food and drink. The campaign describes modern work experience as a practical way to provide earlier employer encounters and build confidence and skills.
For Samworth Brothers, that has a particular resonance.
We’ve been part of our local communities for four generations. Creating opportunities for the next generation isn’t separate from thinking about the future of our business. The two belong together.
For us, this isn’t CSR. It’s our future workforce, in communities we’ve been part of for four generations.
Getting a young person into a job isn’t the same as getting them into work. When they arrive prepared, with a team ready for them, they grow in confidence and they stay. That’s the bit I care about most.”
Through our work with IGD and Feeding Britain’s Future, we want to help open more doors, give young people a meaningful first experience of the workplace and show them just how many opportunities there are within food.
Because investing in the next generation isn’t simply about filling the roles we have today.
It’s about helping build the skills, confidence and workforce our industry will need tomorrow.