[00:00:00] Luke Judge: Okay. Welcome. Welcome, everybody. Pleasure to have you here. Thank you for taking the time to join us for this session. Empowering youth navigating career pathways with City & Guilds. I'm delighted to welcome Faiza Khan, MBE, Executive Director of Corporate Affairs and Foundation at City & Guilds.
Thank you for taking the time to join us today.
[00:00:29] Faiza Khan MBE: No, thank you for having me.
[00:00:31] Luke Judge: Let's start by asking you to do an introduction of yourself because I definitely couldn't do it justice for your role at City Guilds and introducing City Guilds itself. So over to you to start with. And I look forward to learning more about City & Guilds and how you're helping empower youth with their future careers.
[00:00:51] Faiza Khan MBE: Um, so City & Guilds has been around since 1878, so we're almost 150 years old. And what have we done in that time? Well, we still do today what we were established to do, which was help more people get a job. So we were established, um, many years ago to Help remove barriers to jobs, to make a meaningful difference to society through the access of skills, and we still do that today.
Um, and I'll talk more about how, but in terms of my role, I'm Executive Director for Corporate Affairs and Foundation, which means I look after all the policy, the communications, I work with a range of stakeholders, and I also get to head up something called the City & Guilds Foundation, and that does a wonderful range of programs, to do exactly what I said, which is help more people access jobs.
So we give out bursaries, we do programs of change. And why do we do that? We do that because actually we know that there's knowledge and insight through the grant making that can go back into our wider work at City & Guilds and help to increase the workforce. our opportunities and offers for more people to get jobs.
So it's a lovely circle where we're kind of farming some of the intelligence here through the foundation, taking that out to the rest of the organisation and using our position as a convener and a thought leader to influence a better skill system for the future.
[00:02:09] Luke Judge: Amazing, which is really what we need, isn't it, for our future economy to have more skills in more areas, some, some existing, some new.
Thijs, I'm really interested in, in you and how work experience, and we're here to talk about work experience, how work experience has helped you develop your career, um, and, and really what differences you observe now and have, and have experienced between boys and girls in terms of work experience opportunities.
But how has work experience played a role in your career?
[00:02:39] Faiza Khan MBE: Well, so I'm going to say this in, it sounds quite a deficit example, but when I was, um, 15 and I was asked by my teacher, what did I want to do for work experience? And I didn't know, I grew up in an area where there wasn't very much opportunity in East London.
I didn't have. So social capital and lots of networks around me. I didn't have people in careers that I could look to and say, Oh, I'd like to be like you one day. Um, and I didn't have very many role models. So it was just whatever your teacher suggested you did. And my teacher suggested I go to the local nursery and, uh, get involved in child care.
Now I love children, um, and I love young people and I'm really passionate about what you're doing here today, hundo, does because I think hundo has got some really interesting ideas about how to create pathways for young people to gain experience in the world of work today, um, which is different to what it was like when I was 15.
But I guess what isn't different is that I was pushed towards a very stereotypical female occupation, which was around childcare and looking after kids and, um, that my aspirations or my interests, I was very creative. I liked the arts. I had lots of opinions as a child that really wasn't thought about in terms of what I might be good at.
So I went ahead and I did my work experience and I learned how to make play dough and I can still make play dough from scratch. But I guess what I'm saying is it really wasn't the sort of thing that was appealing to my interests my talent, my future aspirations, and therein was possibly a wasted opportunity for me.
Um, I've ended up finding a career that I love. I love advocating and I love, um, giving voice to experience. And that's why I do the work that I do at City & Guilds. And it's why I've always been drawn to public policy roles. But I guess that whole, what you push younger women and girls towards and boys.
what's typically deemed to be a profession for a boy, um, is something that we're still up against today. And I, I, I look at that in today's environment where there's also even less opportunity to experience work because we're in a post COVID environment, work doesn't look like how it used to, and I just think it's really hard for young people to get those opportunities.
So my experience was, A good one, it was enjoyable, but it wasn't one that set me up for a future of work or a career that I might go into. I found my own way through trying and testing different jobs, um, but it wasn't something that I was geared towards.
[00:05:08] Luke Judge: Yeah, yeah. So we should rename this from this, this talk from Play Doh to Policy.
[00:05:16] Faiza Khan MBE: Absolutely.
[00:05:17] Luke Judge: That's your trajectory from learning how to do, how to make Play Doh in work experience through to policy now and you found your way and of course you've got lots of work experience along that, along that pathway. What, what have you found was the most, if this may be a hard question, but what was, The most important thing in that journey from, from Play Doh to policy.
I like this. I like this journey,
[00:05:39] Faiza Khan MBE: you
[00:05:39] Luke Judge: know, that led you to where you are now, you know, MBE, Executive Director of Corporate Policy, I think of Policy and Affairs and Foundation, sorry. Um, what, what, what was the most, what was, was there any moment in your career that was a turning point?
[00:05:57] Faiza Khan MBE: There was, there was, um, for me, it was the first time I had impact on the community by.
Developing a public policy proposal that I did in a room in a council at that time in Hackney was where I was a policy officer, very young, kind of got this job and started to do review of, um, uh, services for black Caribbean boys. And in particular thinking about the haves and the have nots and what services were available for that community.
We did a consultation and it's a very small example of a bit of funding that was unlocked for younger people in that community. It was 200, 000 that the council then decided to make available and I was, you know, very young. I thought, oh, By me doing this paper, by me going through this process, by me being able to speak truth to power, by me being able to hold an event where people with lived experience had come in and spoken to people who are responsible for the services they receive, actually this whole host of money has just become available and a range of monitoring has suddenly opened up because the council's now going to look at what happened and there's almost a systemic change that can be deployed.
through the act of a careful policy exercise with good policy recommendations with good stakeholder engagement. And effectively, that's what I do today is what I've always in every job is how you start to look at wicked issues, if you like, and you look at a system and you look for change to achieve impact.
And City Guilds is no different. Last year we trained 2, 000 apprentices. Every one of those apprentices has a journey. Um, every one of the three and a half million learners has a journey that we work with around the globe. So, it's always about impact for me. That's what excites me. Because it almost doesn't matter if you seem to be standing with that impact.
Because as long as you know it's happening, you know that there is, and I know this sounds cheesy, but there's good in the world. There's something else that's happening because of something you did here.
[00:07:52] Luke Judge: So that, I mean, what a, what a, I mean, that's an amazing story and I wish we had time to dig, dig more into that, but it sounds like that, that moment that you realized you could have an impact and a positive impact going forward led you, led you there onwards to where you are today.
To
[00:08:07] Faiza Khan MBE: more impact, to more
[00:08:09] Luke Judge: impact. Exactly, which is beautiful. Um, now for young people watching this, you know, there's, you mentioned actually, um, just moments ago, um, that it's become harder to get work experience. For young people. And of course, we're here to talk about how important it is. How do you envisage what the work experience now relative to how it used to be and where it perhaps is going and how it's bridging the gap between how do we bridge the gap between traditional work experience.
And perhaps some of the challenges that we experience now post COVID with more flexibility in the office. Um, let's talk about that. How do you envisage the role and the importance of work experience and how it may change to help bridge the gap between education and employment?
[00:08:52] Faiza Khan MBE: I think work experience is hugely important and seeing it as an opportunity to gain insight into worlds of work that you wouldn't have, who wouldn't support that?
However, um, the world of work doesn't look the same way anymore. Um, I was in our offices yesterday. Very few people there. So just suppose I was a young person doing a work experience session. You wouldn't really experience the work environment in its full form because actually half the conversations are going on digitally.
Um, there's a whole host of other interactions that are going on off site elsewhere. And the world of work in terms of a typical nine to five come into the building, go, go Monday to Friday and that you've experienced a full spectrum of conversations and expose that in an office environment isn't available anymore.
I know not everyone works in an office environment, but COVID has such an impact on how we're interacting in all roles that I think we've got to really look at what does work experience look like for young people today and how are they able to access Mentors, um, role models, I don't know if you know speakers for schools, but I'm a big fan of theirs.
It's about, yeah, it's about flipping the conversation into going to where young people are for me. Which is why I think also hundo has a particular role to play in terms of the digital environment. And I think recognizing that work experience cannot be what it was for those of us that did it. that took part in it, even the Play Doh example, physical building, you know, and I know those, those environments are still there, but not all jobs are the way they used to be.
They're not accessible. You can't even like, if you go into an office, which you might've done before and said, Hey, can I do my work experience here? There'd be a whole host of logistical barriers now that never used to be there that the said manager isn't there to talk to, or, you know, You know, someone doesn't even know what day is an in office day.
So, I think we really need to get under the logistical barriers people are facing to experience work and then look at where they are and how we can make work experience more accessible for young people, probably based on where they are and the communities they're interacting in because it's not how it used to be.
[00:10:55] Luke Judge: Yeah, I agree with you. And, um, also, I think that there's an there's another opportunity. There's a there's a view here, which is full of opportunity. So you spoke earlier on and likewise myself that we grew up in areas that we didn't have the advantage or the access to social networks that that other people may have had access to when we were doing work experience.
I was that I was the same. Um, And I look at the opportunities now and building upon what you've just said where actually you can do work experience without necessarily needing to be physically present in the center of a city. And let's talk about that. Do you think that that creates opportunities for young people in more remote locations to have access to more opportunities, not less?
[00:11:37] Faiza Khan MBE: I absolutely think it could, but I don't think we're having the kind of national conversation we need to have about what the future looks like. So, I mean, if I go back to, I had a UK role at the time COVID hit, I was working for the National Lottery Community Fund, um, and we funded across the UK. Um, and I remember doing a conference with our grant recipients and we had, I think we had about 1100 people joined from across the UK.
That couldn't have happened. We couldn't have even afforded it in a physical environment. And we did it online. Because it was COVID, and it was one year from COVID, but actually there was a leveling of the playing field because everyone was signing in on the same machine, they were able to access the same content.
They weren't second class citizens because they happen to be in Northern Ireland, Wales or somewhere else and they weren't observing a physical conversation. It was a level playing field. And I think if we could think about what are the, what's the COVID credit? What's the leveling credit that COVID created in terms of where people can access things?
with equal parity than they might not have been able to. So the example I gave of rocking up at the office and going, so and so here I can talk to, how can we replicate that access in the online world. So that actually a lot more people can experience the gift of maybe a mentor, um, through a digital experience perhaps.
So I think we've got to start thinking about in, if we're worried about productivity, if we're worried about young people's aspirations, if we're worried about youth and employment. We have to go back to where young people are, but also look at where the world of work is in the future. And I think we could really have a, uh, quite a lot of opportunities to do things in a more engaging way with, um, younger people today that they would recognize speaks to their current experience.
[00:13:23] Luke Judge: Yeah. Yeah, I like, I like that. I think there is that leveling of the playing field. I think you've phrased that really, really well. Um, now I couldn't, I couldn't, we can't move into the next part of the conversation without talking about the future of work. You've mentioned it a few times. And of course, we're in a really unique time, I think.
Um, in, in history where there's some major technological changes coming into, into our lives, both personal lives and working lives. Thank you. How do you see the future of work unfolding? You know, there's lots of, lots of discussions about what the future of work looks like. How do you see it?
[00:13:58] Faiza Khan MBE: So I'm, I'm very much in the opportunity space and as a skills provider, as a, you know, skills organisation, a global skills organisation, gosh, we're in 120 countries at City & Guilds.
We're having those conversations internally about how does the offer that we have, um, lend itself to a digital environment, a world with AI. How do we do that? How do we do that in a way that also recognises there are people that have a digital divide and are have, you know, do not have access. So we've talked about the opportunity of digital, but I think we also need to recognize that there will always be for some people, um, the inability to get a laptop, the inability to, um, to access some of the, um, technological advancements that other people are enjoying.
So, yeah, you know, for me, that's what it means to be ethical about it, to think about how can you blend your. gift of learning to your learner and in the best way, take advantage of the digital revolution that we're living through. As we're talking all the time, there are, you know, advancements that are being made that could probably have this interview without me even being part of it, you know, I mean, it's just such a world of opportunity.
If I'm really honest, I think we need to all step back and understand what does that mean for learners, how, as I said, how can we deliver an ethical and accessible and equitable, um, experience. And the equity point is so important because if we can use the advancements well, we can open up to, as I said, City & Guilds were over three and a half million learners last year, but there, there are billions of learners.
Um, and actually we could. be in the position of making learning accessible to them. And so for me, the future of work and the future of learning. is one that should be looking out for those advancements and making learning more accessible to more people in a way that is, you know, I suppose, learner led, bite sized if it needs to be, and digital if it needs to be, but also in a classroom environment if it needs to be.
I think whilst it's complex to knit all that together, that's the challenge and the opportunity that we've currently got if we're going to really maximize productivity and the advancements we can make in the future of work.
[00:16:13] Luke Judge: Yeah. And make the most of those opportunities. Yeah. And, and of course, you know, 3.
5 million, million learners, but then, you know, we're, we're arguably going through a period of time where everyone needs to be a learner. They need to learn, unlearn and relearn in order to be prepared for the future of work, you know, which is. Arguably changing very quickly. Um, moving into the final part of the conversation, what, what role do you think educators, employers, and government have in, in collaborating to help prepare young people and, and adult, adult learners, um, for the skills they need for the future of work?
What, how do you see them needing to collaborate?
[00:16:53] Faiza Khan MBE: So I think we all have to accept all of the things we're talking about today are big, big. challenges and opportunities, as we've said. And I think one of the things that I love about City & Guilds is that because we've been around for a while, we're sort of a stable source that transcends political cycles.
We continue to do what we did in 1878. We continue to make learning available. And what I'd really love is for us all to think, not in political cycles or in fashions, but to think about what can we do to create opportunity for communities. Um, and I think if, whether you're an employer in a local area or you're a local commissioner attached to the public sector, or you're a minister of government to really think about what you can bring to the table that can transcend You know, the next two, three, four years, but here's about a future look at what learners need.
Um, I think we need a national strategy for inclusive growth and by that I mean going really local, hyper local on what local growth looks like and using those employers and the government and learners as equal partners to go, what can growth look like in my community? I think we need to look at fair and accessible funding.
So yes, there's no kind of, you know, there's no kind of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but we have enough resource within the system that perhaps at the moment we're not using in the way we could. I think looking at from a national point of view where you're seeing that there are certain learners that are, you know, Still frozen out, whether you're in the, you know, you're at the edge of work.
What can we do to go a bit further with our funding for those people? Um, and so I think for us, it's, I think for us as a, as a, as a nation, it's about time we have a conversation about investment in skills and really thinking about what we can each play our part to create what we want for the future.
Because I think the way we're doing at the moment isn't, I think most people can say we're not doing well enough on the world stage and for our learners. And yet we have an opportunity. We're about to go into a really interesting political moment that can set the future. And I think if we look future focused, agnostic of political cycles and think about what governments, employers, and learners can bring to the table to address any number of issues, poverty, mental health, young people's unemployment, criminal justice, it's about a much more expansive conversation about how skills can feature in those social justice issues.
[00:19:16] Luke Judge: Yeah, I completely agree. And as you said, we're going through a very interesting political moment globally, I think 72 elections around the world that will bring quite significant change. So very interesting year indeed. Faiza, this has been a fantastic conversation. I can't end without asking you a question off the cuff.
What 15 year old Faiza today to help her have a successful and happy fulfilling career. You
[00:19:45] Faiza Khan MBE: know, I'm going to say, and it's going to sound cheesy because it's on the wall when you walk into our head office, when you walk into the office in, in St. Paul's, but I'm going to say believe you can, because I am typical of people who've maybe not had some of the advantages in their background who has taken a long time to believe I can.
And I think, you know, Don't underestimate those small voices in your head that say, Oh, you're not good enough. Oh, you're not going to manage to do that. Oh, you're a bit different to the others. If you listen to those voices, they can be powerful in driving you forward, but they can also be quite undermining.
So I would say to 15 year old me, believe you can. And I would say to whoever is listening at whatever stage you're at, believe you can. Um, you will get there if you continue to draw out of yourself all the great talent that you've got.
[00:20:32] Luke Judge: I love that. What a beautiful way to finish. Thank you very much. Um, and finally, where can, where can young people or anybody watching this learn about City & Guilds, what you offer, how they can work with you?
[00:20:43] Faiza Khan MBE: Um, so you can go to City & Guilds website. If you want to learn more about the Foundation and some of our bursary programs, you can go to City & Guilds Foundation. And, um, yeah, look out for some of our great, um, offers of learning, whether it's a course you want to go on or whether it's some of our reports you want to read.
There's plenty out there to help you get started.
[00:21:00] Luke Judge: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Faiza Khan, MBE, thank you very much for joining us today and sharing your insights, your career journey, your advice for 15 year old Faiza with us. It's been a fascinating conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. But anybody who, who wants to learn more about hundo and City & Guilds and virtual work experience, please go to hundo.xyz. And, um, sign up to the wait list for the forthcoming virtual work experience programs that are launching in early June. We look forward to seeing you there. Faiza, thank you again. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I look forward to the next one.
