Member Article

ONE approves £2.3m for Graduate Business Programme

Regional development agency One NorthEast has approved more than £2.3m of funding for its Graduates for Business programme. The programme is tied in to the regional development agency’s Driving Demand for Higher Level Skills activities, and allows small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to experience the benefits graduates can bring to their business.

As employees of participating companies, recent graduates will carry out specific, high level projects. Graduates for Business provides proof of how the latest techniques and learning from the region’s HEIs and colleges can be introduced into businesses. The funding will subsidise the placement of recent graduates within regional SMEs, by providing employers with a £70 per week allowance for 15 weeks.

Gillian Collinson, One NorthEast’s Skills and Higher Education Manager, said: “Retaining our graduates is so important for the future development of the region, and at the moment the North East has a lower level of its economically active population qualified to degree level than any other English region.”

Graduates for Business has been running successfully since 2003/04, with over 80 per cent of graduates placed with regional SMEs being retained in employment, resulting in a return of £3.83 (including turnover and profit) for every £1 invested.

Gillian Collinson added: “If we are to meet the ambitious Regional Economic Strategy targets of creating between 18,000 and 22,000 new business and around 70,000 new jobs, we have to encourage our graduates to stay in the region. “We need to show them that they can have a successful career in the region, that they can realise their ambitions here, and Graduates for Business enables us to do that.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .