Department for Education

The Department for Education is responsible for children’s services and education, including early years, schools, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships and wider skills in England.

Business challenge

In our quest to create more inclusive cultures, we created a virtual global mentoring programme and support network called Future Workplace. Our aim with this is to:

Support and empower individuals to return to and enter the workplace

Support individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to succeed

Develop confidence in technology, through partnerships and opportunities with global technology organisations

Provide a variety of diverse perspectives for everyone globally from mentors, to interact and share experiences through global mentoring relationships and conversations

Approach

The programme aimed to empower individuals entering the workplace or returning to work and for the mentors to have a rewarding experience by sharing their lived experiences and guiding the mentees. The programme focused on supporting individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, those entering the workplace for the first time, returning from a period of absence. Through the programme, we built trusted and diverse relationships, often pairing mentees and mentors from different geographical locations.

The mentees and mentors were provided support through our online training modules and webinars on career tips, CV writing, ED&I training and other reference material.

Results

Established global mentor-mentee relationships under this scheme – mentors and mentees from different countries were matched together to ensure diversity of perspectives and better problem solving.
Involved mentees and mentors from over 10 countries including the UK, the USA, India, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Bahrain, Spain and Sweden.
Increased confidence, self-esteem and creativity among mentees.
Provided a sense of achievement to some of the first-time or amateur mentors through being able to help mentees.

About the company:

The Department for Education is responsible for children’s services and education, including early years, schools, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships and wider skills in England.

DfE is a ministerial department, supported by 18 agencies and public bodies.

More than 10 countries involved

Increased confidence, self-esteem and creativity

Testimonials

“Celia’s (her mentor) impact cannot be understated. I signed up for mentoring at a vulnerable time in my life: I’d been unable to access paid employment for three and a half years due to relocating to a different continent six months after my baby was born, and having to provide care for her without the support of friends and family and without a job to return to following maternity leave.  I was becoming depressed; beginning to believe I would never be able to access paid employment. Celia’s support was so potent: her manner was positive and uplifting, and kind; she showed total understanding of my situation. She kept me accountable by asking me to email her with updates between sessions. The sessions themselves were profoundly impactful; Celia talked me through self-esteem building exercises which helped me to see myself in a new, more positive way and shed light on my strengths and abilities. Celia radiated a warm, kind and strongly positive energy and the belief that anything is possible, and I felt the effects of this influence through our Skype sessions. I always left the calls feeling encouraged and inspired. I’m very grateful to Celia and I do feel that the mentoring experience helped hugely in building up my confidence to the point of believing that I could get back into paid employment, and opening my mind to think of different, creative ways to access opportunities for myself.”  – Mentee, Canada

“I have found mentoring very rewarding and interesting and I really enjoyed working with my mentee and guiding her through her journey with changing her career. For me, as I’m not the most senior person in my organisation I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to provide the most ‘expert’ advice. However, I’d encourage everyone to consider themselves as a mentor as your experiences and recommendations will be relevant to someone. I was able to successfully coach and share ideas with my mentee and support her through a big change in her career. Sometimes getting an outside perspective is all that’s needed. I’d highly recommend the programme to both mentors and mentees.” - Mentor, UK