by Manda Carr

Created on: August 19, 2008

If you had asked me ten years ago if I would work for free, my answer would have been no. I volunteer for a number of causes, but 'a honest day's wage for a honest day's work' is a saying I was brought up with. Last year I sent my youngest child to school and started earnestly looking for work to replace the vacuum created by her absence. I was amazed to find out that my skills base was a little out of date; a decade is a long time in computing.

In the UK we have many programmes designed to encourage people back into the workplace. These target groups of people returning to work after a long absence for many reasons; child care, injury, long-term local economic depression, incapacity etc.

Work Trial's could be viewed by prospective workers as unpaid internship horror stories waiting to happen, but the premise is one encouraged to give more up-to-date work experience to the person returning to the work place. With no dependents to find day care for, it was perfect for me to try. There must be hundreds of local employers lining up for a free workforce, right? Wrong.

It is easy to be cynical when looking for the benefits a 'free' worker can mean to an employer, but in today's litigious society it can be daunting, for example, to give a job to someone who you might have reservations about because they have been unemployed due to illness for over six months. The paperwork involved in employment law can be off-putting, not to mention the cost of advertising a post, interviewing, inducting and introducing them to the business accounts, only to lose them a short time down the road. A work trial means an employer can see the prospective worker in the post, and let their time at the trial speak more for them than a Curriculum Vitae would. Once that person is partially trained in the company work ethos, an employer may find they are the perfect match for the advertised role.

The person taking the trial doesn't miss out either. They get an opportunity to get a 'foot in the door' with a prospective employer and show them they are equal to the task. Governmental paperwork for the unemployed can be a nightmare too, when establishing a new claim, but with a work trial that paperwork is simply suspended. The person continues to receive any benefits they are entitled to and is paid up to 10 travel expenses per day.

One of the less tangible benefits to the unemployed job seeker is the boost in personal confidence that getting up and going out to work can give. It is something which empowered me not to take my Work Trial Employer's offer of a job and set up my own business instead. But the experience, the opportunity was one I am still grateful for. Was mine an unpaid internship horror story? Yes, but one which was due to conflicting expectations in the work place, and not due to the premise of the Work Trial programme itself.

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