THE APP FACTOR HITS TOWN TO PUT LOCAL WORKFORCE THROUGH CAREER MOTs
Shocking recent surveys reveal that: 27% of young people in work feel depressed ‘always’ or ‘often’. 48% of NEETs feel this way; Only 8% of us feel we’re in our dream job. Over 42% waste up to 4 hours a week dreaming of what we could be doing instead but 72% of people rate being happy at work as one of the most important factors to their job.* These stats do not paint a happy picture of the UK workforce and this week sees activity take place in Edinburgh to try and redress this.
A welcome addition is to be found on the high street on 4th and 5th September as Pitman Training parks up in their Career Campervan, kicking off the first phase of their national tour in Edinburgh to launch their new, industry leading app. Created to help supercharge our UK workforce, after recent findings from the Princes Trust and Pitman Training Group found huge levels of unhappiness amongst UK workers, the free app has been launched as part of Pitman Training’s Drive Your Future Forward campaign.
Edinburgh’s Pitman Training Centre Manager Tom Maclean said: “We’re looking forward to taking Pitman on tour and are really excited about welcoming many visitors to our campervan on Castle Street. We hope people will make a pit stop in their day to call in for a career MOT and believe that a bit of encouragement, in a fun way, will help people see that they can take charge of their careers, which will lead to Edinburgh being a city full of happy workers”.
To see if Edinburgh is in line with the national statistics or if in fact people in the region are bucking the trend, the Pitman Training team is also offering free 121 advice sessions, to discuss people’s career challenges. The team are hoping to help people identify their key skills and character traits that could help them excel in certain careers and assist them in identifying strengths that could help people from across the region get into gear with the career they really want. This activity is in a bid to improve workplace happiness and career satisfaction.
Tom added: “Asking if your skills are perfectly matched to the job you’re in, and if you could make more use of your key character traits to help you get ahead, our Career MOTs are a chance to see how you can help yourself to be happier at work. Drop in on the way to the office, in your lunch hour, whilst out shopping, or on your way home and tap into our free advice.”
You can find out more and pre-register for free 121 career advice on the website. Anyone who completes the app also has the chance to win the ultimate career package worth over £1500, and gain information on local jobs, as the Pitman Training team works to help Edinburgh fight against the national statistics.
Having a lack of money to train came out in research as a key barrier for why people are not going after their dream jobs, with 37.5% citing this as an issue, however the Career MOT illustrates how to make existing skills pay, as well as identifying new ones you could learn, to help highlight how our unique personalities can be one of our biggest assets in our careers.
Leading happiness consultant and author, Alexandra Watson said:- “Being happy at work isn’t just about whether you like your boss, get on with your colleagues and get to take advantage of long lunches from time to time – today’s workforce is much more driven than that. In tough times we might assume that people are happy just to be in a job, but this isn’t the case. This is when we think even more about our future and our prospects and if we can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel we quickly loose interest. Encouraging people to identify their skills, and key character traits that could help them move forward is a great way to show that there are more exciting futures out there. This is also true for people who are currently unemployed, who may be struggling to see any options at all – having a kind of road map to work to is a huge help”.
Pitman Training statistics show that only 27% of us have a career development plan, with 83% of us referring to our annual appraisal as our only form of reviewing our progress, and 67% of us have not done a skills review since school.*
Pitman Training’s Drive your Future Forward tour kicks off in Edinburgh today and tomorrow. A full schedule can be found here.
Pitman Training’s centre in Edinburgh is based at 26 York Place Edinburgh EH1 3HP.
Submitted by Jo Swann
