Postgraduate Placement Information for Employers.
Welcome!
This portal provides information for employers of MBA, MA and MSc students who are undertaking a work placement, as an integral element of a University of Northampton Postgraduate programme.
A period of work placement within a programme of study is often viewed as pivotal in the development of employability by bringing together academic knowledge with practical application in the workplace.
Students, employers and tutors are the three major stakeholders in organised work placements. Much of the success or failure of placements is due to how well these parties co-operate in the organisation and management of the placement process.
Placement Information: Your Questions Answered
What are Placement Programmes?
Students studying on a wide range of Postgraduate Programmes at The University of Northampton have the opportunity to do a work placement as part of their programme.
The programmes provide the opportunity for students to relate their studies and subject-related theory to real business practice, to experience the atmosphere and pace of different work environments and to apply problem solving in a real business environment.
The programmes provide employers with the opportunity to introduce fresh ideas from a motivated student and is an inexpensive way of employing an intelligent and flexible resource.
What are my responsibilities as an employer?
We ask you to provide the following documents to the student you are employing, so that a student’s job role can be assessed and approved:
- Job offer letter which confirms salary, start and end dates of the job role
- Job description which sets out the general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. It may also specify the manager to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications or skills needed by the person in the job.
- University of Northampton Health and Safety checklist (The student will provide you with a copy of this). As an employer, we ask you to ensure our student is safe in the workplace, which will include assessing risks to the student within the workplace, offering the student a comprehensive Induction programme, and training them as required.
When the placement is underway, we also ask employers to confirm that the student has been attending in the workplace, this assists us in maintaining our commitment to the UKVI to monitoring the attendance of international students. To facilitate this attendance monitoring, we have an electronic system that manages attendance. Guidance about how this process works will be made available to you once the placement has been approved.
What are the criteria that the job has to meet?
The following criteria are applied to all placements:
- The placement should involve the use of higher-level skills
- The placement should be fixed-term, not permanent
- The placement should be for a minimum of 6 months (MBA only) or a maximum of 12 months (MA & MSc programmes)
- The placement should be paid at least UK current minimum wage
- The placement should be full-time (Minimum 35 hours per week, maximum 48 hours per week)
- Approval is subject to approval of four documents that students are asked to provide by a set deadline: A UON Placement Proposal Form; Offer Letter from the employer stating salary and start and end dates; Job description; UON health and safety form.
Can International Students with a Tier 4 UKVI Visa work full-time?
International students are able to work full-time because their placement is an integral part of their course, and therefore permissible under current UKVI Tier 4 Visa rules. Guidance in paragraph 297 explains that ‘If you are a Tier 4 (general) student…then in certain circumstances, you will be permitted to undertake a work placement as part of your course, providing it is an integral and assessed part of your course’.
The student will provide you with a letter from the University confirming that they are able to work full-time. Please retain a copy of this letter for your records.
What do students study when they are on work placement?
Students on placement are just like any other employee in that they are employed by the company to fulfil a particular placement job role. However, placement students will also be studying in addition to their full-time job role.
Whilst students are employed, they undertake a work-based project which considers the relationship between organisational culture and the working environment. The working environment includes things like office layout, architecture, symbolic uses of space and so on.
Students follow a very strict ethics protocol for their project, which means they have to secure the consent of the organisation for their proposed project. All references to the organisation, and those employed by the organisation, will be confidential AND anonymised.
How are students supported when they are on placement?
Students will be allocated an academic supervisor who will visit the student in the workplace and guide them during their work-based project. We would expect to visit the student in the workplace on one occasion. We warmly welcome the opportunity for an academic supervisor to meet with the student’s line manager/supervisor to discuss a student’s progress but this is not a requirement of the programme.