Works for Us has been supporting local people in to work and training for over 40 years. We are dedicated to providing quality, individualised and, crucially, free employability support to ensure that our clients reach their potential - but we can’t do it alone.

Here at Works for Us, we believe that everyone deserves to be treated as an individual. We offer our clients a safe environment to build their confidence, soft skills and understanding of the labour market so that they are equipped to move forward into training or paid work. 

Building a relationship with us is both mutually beneficial and incredibly rewarding. We help hundreds of people every year to overcome stress and anxiety, build confidence, develop work-skills and find employment – and by working with us, you can help us to achieve fantastic results. 

Working with a charity can be a great way to ensure your organisation can give something back and positively impact the local community.

Why support Works for Us?
Build your brand and improve PR is a key to:

• Engage your existing workforce
  The modern workplace is made up of individuals that are increasingly conscious of social responsibility and their impact on the wider world. Show your staff that you value whilst fostering a sense of organisational pride and loyalty by developing your organisation’s philanthropic arm.
  
  
• Enhance employer branding
  To attract the best talent, it is essential to set yourself apart from other employers. By working with us, you will be demonstrating that you are a conscientious, impactful employer – improving your organisation’s brand image, trustability and overall attractiveness to candidates.
  
  
• Develop your organisation’s network

          Whilst Works for Us is only one charity, Milton Keynes has a big community of other charities and organisations that
          regularly support each other, share resources, best practice and other expertise to enhance our community. By     
          linking with us your organisation can also link to this community. This could provide your organisation with additional
          business opportunities and a chance to network across the whole of Milton Keynes too.

• Develop your organisation's reputation

​          We support a wide variety of individuals, many of whom are skilled and actively looking for work. By supporting Works
          for Us, you could have access to dozens of potential candidates; it will be a great chance to connect with passionate
​           people working within the charity to tackle issues relevant to your local community, and possibly your business too.

Know you are making a difference

If your organisation is passionate about transforming people’s lives for the better, you’re in the right place. Our clients come to us facing a myriad of challenges, including low confidence, lack soft/functional skills, mental health issues, lack of understanding of the current labour market and much more. By working with us, you are directly impacting the lives of local people in need of support and guidance.  

How Organisations Can Help

Hold a fundraising event
Fundraising is not just a charitable act; it can be a great team building exercise to motivate your staff and boost morale.
By fundraising for Works for Us, you will be raising valuable funds to enable us to help our clients improve their confidence and get work-ready.

Provide work placements
Work placements are a fantastic way for our clients to develop their skills and experience and we are always looking to connect with local businesses who can host individuals on a short-term basis.
Offering work experience placements can also be a valuable way to increase organisational capacity while giving someone the opportunity to practically prepare themselves for paid employment.  

Provide mentoring for our clients – mock interviews etc
Many of our clients are success in getting interviews, however, we find that they may not have been for an interview before or not for a long time. This can cause anxiety and distress so we work with them to try and reduce this stress by giving them an insight into how an interview may go. We look at the role and provide a mock interview based around this. We provide constructive feedback and techniques to help the client feel more comfortable and confident in their presentation skills to attend the interview and possibly getting the role they are looking for. Many organisations have employers who are used to providing these types of interviews and these skills and experience are invaluable for our clients. In fact it could benefit your organisation too and you may find the candidate you are looking for.

Provide training opportunities for our clients 
Whilst work placements are brilliant for our clients to experience a working environment, organisation training is equally important. We welcome organisations that can help us with providing training or trainers especially around how to deal with people, customer service, health & social care etc. At the same time taster sessions on what your organisation can offer is equally important. How many people really know what an organisation does before they start working there?

Provide information about job roles available
We are regularly working with clients to identify roles in certain sectors, but don't always have access to what is available. If your organisation is looking for a new staff member then please let us know about your role and we can support our clients to apply for your role. We are always looking for roles in IT, Accountancy, Retail, Warehousing, Health & Social Care to name a few. 

Donate office clothes, equipment and materials
Whether it’s clothes for our Working Wardrobe, up-to-date IT, ergonomic office equipment or even supplies for our art sessions, we welcome all donations as they enhance our service and support our clients needs. We regularly have clients who have interviews coming up but don't have suitable interview attire to attend so are likely to not go. We provide them not only with clothing but also with an insight into what colours/ types of clothing suits them, how to present themselves and also what employers are looking for.

Be a charity partner  
We are looking for organisations who can become our champions, possibly sponsor and or work with us to enhance our services, provision,  skills, knowledge and experience. We want to help our clients to access all the right services for them and regularly work in partnership with other organisations on funding bids and projects that do this with the client at the forefront. Our aim is to increase the clients ability to build a better future for themselves and your organisation might want to work with us on this. Organisations have access to lots of business networks that we may not, so being able to champion and network on our behalf would increase local awareness of our services and may offer other opportunities.

Alternatively, you can support us while you shop at no extra cost to your organisation via AmazonSmile and EasyFundraising. For more information about this please see our fundraising page here. 

For further information or if you are interested in working with us or to discuss more options about how your organisation can help, please Get in touch, email info@worksforus.org.uk, or call us on 07852 963744. and we will get in touch. Thank you.