Young Leader Employers FAQ

Our Young Leaders have worked extremely hard for us, and thanks to their input we have reached the point where we can obtain funding for Young Leaders to deliver work for third party employers. A work package is developed in collaboration with these third parties which we call ‘External Product Owners’. The role of the Product Owner is simply to define a goal. It does not matter how ambitious or extraordinary – we just need to define first steps on the way to success (Young Leaders can help – they are good at that)

Ethos is funded to support the Young Leader to achieve this shared aim and we work together in collaboration, trust and moderated self – interest, avoiding ideas of failure which leads to spirit-crushing shame.

We were ahead of the curve on remote working and are experts in utilising technology to create knowledge work. The kind of work our Young Leaders have provided includes social marketing, videography and film production, podcasting, photography, graphic design, copywriting, customer services, sales, market and business research, branding, business model design, business development, coding, company IT systems development, data modelling, human resources and people support, mentoring, project management, publishing. We are pleased to say that several of them have already started incubating their own business ventures – inspired by our entrepreneurial, have a go mindset.

All this is driven and supported by our own particular innovation – an open source system we call our Value Exchange Dynamic. Concern for human wellbeing is at the heart of the relationship between Ethos VO and our Young Leader – even over desire to bring positive social impact. We seek, and will only work with, partners who share our values.

Ethos Young Leader Mentorship programme is delivered through the Ethos Work Platform – a human-centred work system based on recognition for contribution. Together the Ethos community of Partners has worked with our Young Leaders to define our ‘Work Platform’ which comprises three elements:

1. Our core values: trust, collaboration and moderation of self interest
2. A technology platform to plan, develop and record work in progress
3. A mentoring system to support work delivery, process and wellbeing, anchored in our Value Exchange Dynamic

Ethos has evolved its work platform with over 200 individuals since 2010. Some proud spin offs from our platform include:

Skillsplanner
Buildlondon.org.uk
Lewisham Construction Hub
BuildingPathways
Team Police
Team Army

We have taken every care to minimise risks to our young adults, our External Product Owners and ourselves. Our young adults are organised and facilitated to consider themselves as a ‘community of practice’ characterised by mutual support and learning. Within this supportive environment the young adults are given significant scope to self-organise, to discover and explore new opportunities and deliverables working with their Product Owners (who may be external to Ethos or an Ethos Partner) Thus, deploying one or more young adults to deliver valuable work represents little risk to the young adult or the Product Owner. As part of the deal, we take care of all requirements to support the Young Leader in improving their employability, and help them develop their career path and transition to other work at the end of the placement.

Young Leaders is an Ethos Work venture which developed out of our response to the Covid emergency in 2020: we recruited a number of unemployed young people looking for meaningful work. From January 2021 we have been able to offer funded training, development and workplace opportunities to anyone living anywhere in the UK, aged 16 – 24 and on Universal Credit. This is currently backed by the government’s Kickstart Scheme which funds 6 months work placement. The engagement must include ‘employability support’ which we can deliver to DWP requirements on our platform.