Interns: Give ‘Em the Money

Many of us fondly remember doing school work experience: a couple of weeks out of the classroom, fannying around with filing cabinets, was often a welcome reprieve from exam stress. But what about unpaid internships, or longer-term work experience? These often happen after education is finished, and debate rages as to their value. Are they fantastic opportunities for young people to learn and discover what they want to do for a living, or an exploitative, money saving hoop that employers force candidates to jump through?

I’ve heard anecdotes covering the full gamut of approaches, including small businesses whose workforce is formed primarily of foreign students interning as a required part of their degree. This doesn’t seem unfair on the interns, as their living costs are covered by their student finance. However, the main outcome seems to be that permanent staff waste time in repeatedly training new staff every 3-9 months, and then take the blame if their under-experienced colleagues can’t produce the desired results. Interns walk away with an improved degree, but employees pay the price.

Probably more common are the innumerable large, well known businesses, in industries young people are competing to work for, whose so-called ‘entry-level’ positions nonetheless require some level of previous experience. This means that the only way to get such a job is by working for free first. Unpaid work experiencers or interns are often scattered across departments, essentially allowing the business to trial and train new talent without risk to themselves. Especially when the business is successful enough to hire them as temps, this seems hugely unfair.

Now, I don’t believe that the vast majority of employers actively want to exploit anyone: but money, sad to say, is something we all actually need. If interns are expected (although companies cannot demand it) to work full time without pay, they’re going to need an alternate source of income. Some might be able to get a supplementary part-time job, but that’s unlikely to cover living costs, and is probably going to prohibit any work/life balance.

This brings up a secondary problem. For better or worse, more and more of the best opportunities are to be found in London – and the UK’s capital also has the most expensive rent in Europe. OK, so some internships pay expenses, but often only local ones, such as a Zone 1 Travelcard. (Find me an unpaid intern that can afford to live in Zone 1 and I will actually eat my socks.) Living further out isn’t much of an economy: the cost of public transport may well mean paying more in travel than could possibly be saved in rent. For example, doing the under 90-minute journey from Leicester to London for a month will cost you over ￡1,000.

For many young people, asking their parents to help is the only option, and those that don’t have that possibility might be unable to pursue some of the most exciting jobs. Some might offer up the excuse that ‘it’s only for a few months’, but if you just don’t have the money, it’s not as if you can skip eating, sleeping or showering. And obviously, work experience or internships are most likely to be deemed relevant to those at the start of their careers. Giving such an advantage to those from an already privileged set of circumstances could mean narrowing the diversity of your workforce for decades.

What about those companies that rely on unpaid interns as a major and continual component of their workforce? Even if they’re financially covered, I think this is a short-term saving for a long-term loss. Permanent staff who are constantly training new recruits can’t really get on with whatever you hired them to do. And if people are only with you for a few months, they can’t possibly become the experts you need to grow your business. Similarly, if you’re only using your interns to fetch coffee and your dry cleaning, you really need to either get your life together, or hire a PA.

I think there’s one big lesson to take away: that properly compensating workers benefits everyone in the long term. At Capita, we believe that ethical and responsible businesses shouldn’t advocate unpaid internships. Offering fair pay, rather than taking advantage of a passionate desire to work for you, is obviously right in and of itself. But expecting unpaid work also reinforces unfair economic disparities, by excluding those less advantaged from opportunities they deserve just as much as their more privileged peers. If nothing else, think about the future of your company, and of your industry as a whole. If you’re not prepared to fully invest in your people, why on Earth should they invest in you?