Common Purpose Blog

Economic instability has presented businesses with many challenges since the great crash of 2008 – and these problems have refused to disappear. It is amid these harsh financial realities that the perception of learning and development (L&D) has changed. A recent survey by the Henley Business School suggested that L&D has become increasingly focused as organisations look [...]

This week’s youth unemployment statistics – nearly 1 million young people in the UK out of work – are sad and disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising! At Common Purpose, because we work with people across the UK and beyond, both employers and the unemployed, I have been hearing since the start of the year that [...]

I met a 22 year old in Edinburgh recently who has just finished her nursing qualifications, she is eager to get going with her career, make her contribution to society and use her knowledge and skills but there are so few jobs coming up that the competition is fierce – it’s no better if she [...]

Nearly 1m young people out of work in the UK is a shocking statistic. There are many schemes to help them find employment which is crucial, but an important area that’s often missed is that few exist to offer the training and development opportunities these young people would have received if they had a job. [...]

When I started work, I was very lucky. My first boss gave me opportunities to lead small teams from a very early age – to learn some of the lessons at an age when I could simply bounce back from my mistakes – to mess up when the stakes were not high – to succeed [...]