The Government's Kickstarter Scheme

March 15, 2021

If you need more help in your business but only have a limited budget, the government’s Kickstarter scheme could be a great option for you.

It allows businesses to take on employees aged 16-24 years old for 25 hours a week on a placement for six months. The government pays their wages for you and gives you a grant of £1500 per placement to help induct them into your business and train them too.

You used to be able to only apply for a minimum of 30 placements which is an unfeasible amount for many small businesses, but they recently announced that you no longer need to apply for that many to qualify for the scheme which is great news!

I’m currently helping one of my clients with her strategy for her intake of Kickstarter employees and wanted to share some important points to note about it:

• Its purpose is to help young people at risk of long-term employment get work experience and skills that will help their future career. By taking people on through this scheme and receiving free labour, you need to have regular check ins with them, give them feedback on their work and support them with writing their CVs, interview skills etc so only consider applying if you feel able to do this.
• The roles you fill need to be entry-level and only require basic training - so you can’t fill complex roles that require specialised experience.
• They must be new positions so you can’t replace existing roles with a Kickstarter employee.
• The Job Centre work coaches do the first round of recruitment for you and you are given a shortlist of people to interview and select from. So, it’s really important that you write excellent job descriptions, so they know the type of candidates you want.

Click here to head to gov.uk's Kickstarter page for more info now. 

 

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