We recommend that experiences of the workplace are managed in Compass+ in two ways:
- Creating an experience of the workplace activity for multiple learners
- Creating experience of the workplace activity for a single learner
Creating an experience of the workplace activity for multiple learners
When setting up experience of the workplace activities in Compass+, it is most likely that you will be creating them for multiple learners (e.g. whole classes, year groups). If this is the case, you do not need to create a separate activity for every individual learner in Compass+. Creating experience of the workplace activities for learners appropriately will also make sure that they contribute to your Gatsby Benchmark scores.
To create an experience of the workplace activity for multiple learners, firstly navigate to Activities > Create new activity in the navigation bar:
Select ‘Benchmarks 2-8’, then click on the ‘Create activity’ button:
A new activity form will open.
Give the activity a name e.g. ‘Year 10 summer term Experience of the Workplace’.
Then select ‘Work experience’ under Gatsby Benchmark 6 in the main category dropdown list:
Add an additional Benchmark categories (if applicable) from the second dropdown. Please note: only the main category Benchmark contributes towards your Benchmark scores.
Now, add the school lead for the activity, followed by the whole period in which the activities for the group are taking place. In the example below, the experience of the workplace lasts for one month:
You then need to add all the learners undertaking this experience in the period. In the example below, the whole of Year 10 is added:
Any learners who will not be participating can be removed from the group by clicking on the edit icon beside Year 10:
Remove the learners not undertaking this experience by clicking on the ‘X’ beside their names:
Add any providers helping to deliver the experience of the workplace. This may include the employers hosting the experience, or activity providers assisting in the planning and organisation of work placements. If these organisations are in your Careers Providers Database, you can add them quickly to the activity by clicking in the employers/providers field and selecting them from the dropdown list.
If you are using your institution as an activity partner to provide experiences of the workplace, you can also add it as an activity provider in the Careers Partners Database first, before adding it to experience of the workplace activity:
Finally, add any notes that might be useful, then click ‘Save activity':
The experience of the workplace activity will appear as a single activity in your Activities, and also in every individual profile of the Year 10 learners who have been assigned to the activity.
To mark the activity as completed, you must wait until the whole period of the experience of the workplace has been completed (in the example above, this date is 27 July):
Note that, while every school manages experiences of the workplace differently, a learner will be marked as present for completing the activity if they have been marked as present in the school's MIS.
Evidencing experiences of the workplace : work placements
Learners may be asked to complete an evaluation or document a work placement.
As files cannot be attached to Compass+, we recommend that you enter the location of the folder that contains the evaluations for each learner (e.g. in Word files) on your institution’s network drive in the notes field of the experience of the workplace activity:
Alternatively, you may wish to copy-and-paste a learners experience of the workplace evidence into one of the notes fields in the ‘Interests and Destinations’ tab screen of their individual learner profile:
Again, it may also be useful to save the location of the learners work experience evidence on your institution’s network drive.
Creating an experience of the workplace for a single learner
If you need to create an experience of the workplace activity for a single learner (or smaller group), repeat the steps above, but only select the single learner from the learner list.
Start by typing the learners name into the box:
As this single experience of the workplace activity may have been created to take place within a shorter period of time, the activity can be marked as ‘Complete’ as soon as the learner has completed this activity.