Solihull Council visit

Ranjit Hayer, Career Academy Co-ordinator & Business teacher

It’s been a really busy week for the College’s Career Academy students. Earlier in the week they found out about an exciting internship opportunity with Coventry Building Society, and that has been followed by a visit to Council House in Solihull.

The visit was a great opportunity for them to go behind the scenes at Solihull MBC and see what really goes on. They met with Mark Rogers, Chief Executive at the Council, who has been such a staunch supporter of the students and the Career Academy as a whole. He welcomed the students when they arrived.

                                   

Mark Rogers is passionate about the Career Academy, which is a national scheme that raises the aspirations and develops the employability skills of young people. Indeed, he has spoken of how committed the Council is to supporting initiatives that link business and education as the Career Academy does, and how he hopes more businesses come on board to support the scheme.

The students were shown round Council House by Paul Johnson, who is Director of Resources, and Philip Mayhew, who is Director for Business Transformation. We thank both Paul and Philip for giving up their time to speak with the students and give them such a valuable insight into the inner workings of Solihull MBC.

The students were shown the variety of Council departments, and got information on the different job roles and skills sets required to work at the Council. This included seeing where the Council receives its money from and the IT department. At the latter, the students saw how the infrastructure works, in terms of ensuring all the software works properly and how staff monitor the computers using sophisticated technology. There was a picture of the screens that highlight problems that the staff maybe experiencing and this works on a traffic light system, with green meaning “working ok”, amber signifying “there is a problem” and red showing that the software has “stopped working”.

The Marketing representative was also available and discussed how they use Twitter to discuss Council events and to notify members of the public what is happening at the Council. The students also saw how they put together the Council magazine that goes out to all Solihull residents. This department mentioned to the students the important skill of spelling in their line of work and how paying attention to what they are saying is crucial.

Another department they went to was Procurement, where they explained how they look at the companies who work for the council (e.g. the refuse collectors), how the light bulbs in the lamppost are changed and how recycling is done in different parts of the borough.

They were then taken to the Lean department where certain processes are looked at to see where savings can be made to ensure the people who need help receive it quickly. This department was made up of post-it notes, in which each step in processing a claim for benefits (for example) was visually displayed and then a brainstorming session was done to see how the process can be changed to reduce the time for the claim to be processed.

Lastly, the students got to go into the main Council Chambers and sit in the seats normally reserved for the Mayor of Solihull and councillors, which they obviously really enjoyed.

The visit was a valuable opportunity for the students and they learnt a lot. Check out the photos of the visit on the College’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/solihullsixthform.