The Need
Generation launched in the UK response to a paradox and socio-economic imperative. Talent is equally distributed. Opportunity, though wide, is not.
There are >1m unemployed people in the UK. And this unemployment is sticky and disproportionately experienced by certain groups with huge variances; young people, ethnic minorities, those with disabilities or without degrees are twice or more as likely to be and/or remain unemployed.
And at the same time, there are >1m vacancies, with many new, exciting, well-paid jobs being created in growth sectors; enough to support everyone. Despite this, businesses of all sizes consistently struggle to hire. And when they do hire, traditional channels ensure under-representation persists; only a 5th of tech sector workers are women or ethnic minorities. Beyond this, many who do find work find poor, low-skill, low-potential work. 1 in 8 remain in in-work poverty and the cost of living crisis has driven more into poverty.
Existing and mainstream skilling initiatives are not and have been insufficient to solve these challenges at scale and have been relatively inflexible in addressing emerging skills gaps such as in cybersecurity, cloud and the green sector.
This context creates a need and opportunity for new talent pathways supporting people against the odds into good jobs.
Our Work
Generation launched as a charity in the UK in 2018 with the mission to support those facing barriers to employment into life-changing jobs they otherwise could not access. Our work is a direct response to challenges above.
To meet this mission we deliver an award-winning model of profession-specific boot-camp training, focused on in-demand careers, with extensive, ongoing pastoral support and matchmaking to interviews with employer partners.
Generation in the UK And we form part of a multi-national network of 19 Generation country affiliates that have supported c.100k learners worldwide under the same model.
Since launch the charity has secured c.£25m of funding, has supported over 2,500 people, built a team of c.70 highly capable and dedicated professionals, and has developed a track-record and reputation as a high impact organisation. Around 800 UK employers have recruited from our programmes so far.
The charity has also evolved and pivoted with the landscape during this time. In 2019 the government launched a Skills Bootcamp policy, with £1.5bn pledged over 2022 to 2028. Generation was one of 10 organisations selected in 2019 to work with Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined authorities as an initial trial of the effectiveness of Skills Bootcamps. Following positive results, the policy has been scaled up. So far c.£150m has been commissioned, with this set to grow in the coming years.
There are now more than 100 private sector organisations being commissioned by the Department of Education. Generation, having secured funding in every wave of the policy, is the largest charity, and only charity operating at meaningful scale, working with the government on this policy. It is also clear from the data released so far that Generation is serving a fundamentally different population of people from the private sector players, led by Generation’s role as a charity to target and serve people facing multiple barriers to employment.
This policy and the effective model has allowed Generation to continue to grow, to operate across West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Greater London, West Yorkshire, with recent expansion to support our first learners from Bristol and Liverpool. Generation also delivers in Scotland, which operates under different government funding policies, but where Generation has also been successful in securing public sector support and funding.
In this context Generation enters 2024 in a strong financial position, including a significant contract with Department of Education for delivery from March 2024 to May 2025 and support from a fantastic set of private-sector partners, typically the philanthropic arms of large corporations who have provided multi-year grants, including Macquarie, Blackrock, JP Morgan, Barclays, Impetus, CD&R, and 10-15 others.
Our Impact
In September 2023 Generation UK hosted a key summit ‘Social Mobility and Skills Bootcamps’, hosted at Blackrock’s headquarters. This gathered over 100 thought leaders, partners, funders, policy makers, and press, and also marked the release of Generation UK’s social impact report, tracking 4 years of impact with sector-leading analysis. This was a seminal moment in Generation’s growth, and laid a platform for ongoing voice and leadership across the system.
The report presented an analysis of our ‘true’ social impact. This work compared our outcomes to estimates of what would have happened without our support (the gold-stands, ‘counter-factual’ approach to understanding impact). We showed that our learners are much more likely to find work, and not just any work but good work that is more likely to be full-time, better paid, and with a higher chance for promotion. The result is drastically different earning trajectories; we estimate our learners earn >£20k more over 5 years than had they not had our support. The biggest impact was seen for the learners who face more, therefore intersectional, barriers to employment.
The report also summarised our impact to date as
We have enrolled over 2800 un- and under-employed learners facing significant and multiple barriers to employment on to >100 boot-camps/cohorts. We have established a portfolio of 7 programmes meeting a variety of acute employer skills gaps and serving diverse beneficiaries. We run these programmes across 5 regions with programmes accessible to >50% of the UK’s unemployed. We are proud of our high quality delivery with learner feedback consistently very high: c.70% Net Promoter Score & >90% of learners (strongly) agree they are more confident in their future upon completing boot-camps.
We have supported diverse learners who face a wide range of significant barriers to employment – 3-4 different barriers on average. Our learner have a profile of c.20% with a disability, >50% without a degree, c.20% unemployed for >12 months, c.45% either previously free school meals or from a ‘low socio-economic background’ by parental income/employment status, and c.70% from an ethnic minority background in the UK.
For these learners we have achieved >1400 job outcomes, at a sector-leading placement rate of 65-70% of those who have completed our placement phase (6 months post-bootcamp). The average placement salary has been £24k across the >700 employers who have now hired a Generation learner. This represents a c.2-3x uplift from our estimates of pre-programme income (most commonly Universal Credit as the vast majority of our learners are unemployed) and a level above national living wage. And within this our outcomes have been remarkably consistent across demographic groups, as we ‘flatten’ the curve of disadvantage.
Our learners don’t just get, but keep jobs, with their lives truly changed. The economy-wide turnover rate of jobs is.30% per annum. However, for those placed into work by Generation, their job retention rate 365 days later is 80-90%, as they enjoy a step-change in opportunity and socioeconomic opportunities for themselves and their families.
The Next Steps
We are proud of our track record to date, yet ambitious to significantly grow and scale our impact. As we seek to grow we will not just ‘scale’, but scale by and whilst deepening and widening our impact both in terms of our direct delivery and our influence on the wider skilling ecosystem.
And in the medium term our strategic priorities include to …
- Reach new levels of impact in terms of the speed and level of job outcomes with the introduction of a refined and re-organised post-programme ‘placement phase’.
- Reach more people facing multiple barriers to employment introducing an explicit target for people facing >=3 barriers to employment and maximising in-person outreach activity driving deeper community reach.
- Improve our quality of delivery with multiple initiatives including increased learning differentiation based on learning starter point and more quality assurance/observations.
- Innovate and build a wider portfolio to support growth with the launch of 2 new programmes and drive a wider systems impact through both wide sharing of our results and insights.
- Launch work delivering in partnership to upskill other organisations (e.g. colleges) to run boot-camps under the Generation model to expand our ability to have impact beyond our own ‘boots on the ground’.
- Produce research to highlight the distinct role boot-camps under the Generation model can play in driving social mobility.
The charity has been Chaired by Dame Vivian Hunt since foundation in 2018, launching and growing the charity, alongside building a strong and effective Board and governance processes. Throughout this journey Vivian has worked closely with Michael Houlihan, who has been CEO throughout, and remains in the role.
As we move into 2024, Vivian is leading a process to appoint a new Chair to lead the next chapter. Specifically, we seek a Chair who is well placed to lead Generation UK over a planned two terms (each of 3 years), as the charity continues to build it’s role in the system as the leading charity working with the government on their flagship Skills Bootcamp policy.