A work placement scheme that builds the confidence of everyone involved

Lucinda working alongside Abi at Works Social

Lucinda, from Dispace, shares why they chose to support our work placement pilot and how it benefited them as a small business on their journey to launching a new service.

We signed up to the Collaborative Future work placement scheme almost as soon as we heard about it. Too often, internships and apprenticeships are unpaid or non-flexible with hours meaning they’re only accessible to people who can either afford to not be paid or give up a current role for a short-term opportunity with no guarantees. As a flexible working team, we could easily work around commitments and the fact that the young people would actually be compensated for their time made us really excited to be involved.

We worked with Sonia, who joined during a business pivot for us, which, while overwhelming, did give her the opportunity to see all sides of a business from market research to product development. For us, it was really helpful to make sure our new direction made sense to someone with a fresh pair of eyes before our public launch.

Originally, Dispace worked with venues to get more creative with their space by offering discount packages to freelancers and remote workers. It meant they could get more trade during the typically quieter weekdays and freelance and remote workers could have an affordable alternative to home-offices and costly leases. We’ve loved this and have built a great community, especially in the Midlands and seen some amazing collaborations come out of members meeting at our Dispace venues.

However spending more time with venues, and with quite a tech focused team, we found a lot of gaps in event management software and began to build Switch. Switch offers an online calendar, live booking and dynamic pricing as well as internal tools and the ability to integrate with third-party services like marketing, accounting and social media. Our aim is to create a centralised tool so venues can lower admin while increasing bookings.

Sonia worked directly with me to conduct market research, build new graphics, design signatures and the million and one other little bits that spring up whilst working in a small business. In return, I worked on teaching Sonia some of the technical sides of marketing to compliment her design background. We were thrilled to be part of the project and have such positive feedback from Sonia about her experiences.

On a personal note, I found the experience a really unexpected confidence boost. Before the placement, I was worried about what I’d gotten myself into and had imposter syndrome: surely I didn’t know enough to be able to teach someone valuable skills for their career? But I the experience gave me a chance to really reflect how far my skills, knowledge, and just overall self, had come since starting out in marketing.

I think any size business would be able to find something from this experience, but, from a small business perspective it’s a great opportunity to build confidence in your team, make sure your ideas and vision make sense to an outside point of view and, most importantly, help others take their first or next step in their career!

If you’re interested in Dispace you can visit www.dispace.co. If you’d like to find out more about Switch before our public launch you can email hello@dispace.co, or just drop us a line for anything you’d like to chat about.