Employers:  How to sign up

How do I sign-up as an employer?

Signing up with Inspiring the Future as a professional body is free.  Simply click on the orange button on the Home Page, tick the relevant categories and complete the online form.

When your organization is signed up – what will your employees need to do?

Your employees can then register as volunteers through the Inspiring the Future portal, where they will be asked to provide a few basic details, their email address and password and a few more details about themselves, and what they can offer as a volunteer.

They’ll be asked to select specialisms and activities that thy can volunteer for – currently these are:

Specialisms				Activities
Apprenticeships / Traineeships Cadetships				Career Insight Talks and Activities
Design and Manufacturing				Curriculum Link
Enterprise/Entrepreneurs				Help with Resumes and/or Realistic Mock Interviews
Financial Literacy				Exchanging Expectations
Maths – Using it at work				Reading or Numeracy
Science and Technology
Languages – French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Urdu, Arabic

Schools will search for volunteers from their ’Find Volunteers’ page, based on the information volunteers provide. Private email addresses and phone numbers are not visible to either party.

Inspiring the Future Invitations

Teachers can then contact volunteers via the portal and invite them to their Inspiring the Future activity they have coming up. Having received the invite message containing the time commitment requested and the activity date (if defined), volunteers can reply to indicate if they are able to be involved or not and/or they can request further information. If necessary, ongoing conversations can take place regarding changes to availability, event logistics etc.

Feedback

Electronic feedback forms are automatically triggered to participants after the activity. We ask a few questions of both volunteers and schools about how the activity went. We strongly recommend that this is completed, as it allows us to keep an eye of the quality of volunteers and whether the service is working for both parties. We also use your feedback to report to funders, which will help to keep this service free to schools and volunteers.

Planning and preparation

Volunteers can expect invite messages from teachers in schools/colleges once they are matched in the system. When you are contacted you might want to talk about:

• Length: how long you can be with the students

• What topics you can cover and how can you best use your expertise

• The equipment available (if relevant)

Before the session

• Volunteers should arrive in good time before the session to give themselves the best opportunity to speak to the teacher and set up the room

• If a volunteer is going to be late or cancel an appointment, he/she needs to let the teacher know as soon as possible

• Volunteers need to know which member of staff will be with them during their visit

• Volunteers need to let the school know if they require a car parking space

Other practical guidance for employers

For more detailed guidance read our LATEST Employer Presentation for advice on how to get started and plan your work with schools and colleges.