Internal stakeholder mapping – routes to employers

Introduction

This resource is for employer engagement staff. It should be used to identify specific organisations that your school or college have existing relationships with. 

By mapping internal stakeholders, employer engagement staff can identify who is best placed at the school or college to approach organisations to offer industry placements. 

Guidance

Organisations or people that have an existing relationship with your school or college are more likely to offer industry placements than businesses you have no connection with. 

This tool helps you think creatively about all the organisations or people your school or college has a relationship with and how you might leverage that relationship to secure industry placements in the coming years. 

Group exercise:

It is a good idea to map your internal stakeholders as part of a group exercise where possible, as it’s unlikely you’ll have knowledge of all the stakeholders on your own. 

Column B – Potential stakeholders:

Column B lists common stakeholders that a school or college might have connections with. Not all the potential stakeholders will be relevant to your individual institution. Likewise, there will be other stakeholder types not listed that you know of. Add and delete potential stakeholder types as required. 

Column C – Who are the stakeholders?

Put individual stakeholder names in this column. Two examples have been completed for you (after school clubs and alumni). You may need to find out from other members of staff the names of individual companies you’re working with. 

Column D – Which subjects?

Once you know the stakeholder names, you can research their business a little to judge what type of industry placements they might be able to offer that are aligned to your T Level offer. Remember to think about back-office functions as well as the front-facing work that organisation does. 

Column E – How likely are they to support employer engagement / industry placements?

Once you know the companies or individual stakeholders working with the college and have thought about the type of placement they might offer, give them a rough score of how likely you think they will be to offer industry placements that are suitable. You don’t need to spend too much time thinking about how accurate your score is, it will just allow you to prioritise your plan of action. 

You can then sort on this column and to prioritise your list.

Column F – When to approach?

It can take six+ months to secure industry placements, so do not wait a month or two before placements start to approach organisations about offering placements. Think about the time of year they might be thinking about staffing for the following season or when T Levels will be in the national or local press to make an initial approach to talk about industry placements and/or working with college students. 

Column G – How best to approach?

The last column is for you to think through the approach method that you’ll use. Remember, your SLT, Governors and staff are likely to have built relationships with existing employers, so don’t be afraid to ask them to make introductions via email for you, so that your first engagement is not ‘cold’. 

Related resources

Email templates for internal stakeholders - this resource has some template emails you can adapt to send to internal stakeholders such as SLT, staff, alumni and governors.