Springboard

Springboard is a work experience programme giving young people aged 16-18 from all backgrounds access to work experience, mentorship and support from a diverse team of PA Consulting experts. Working together in small groups, the students devise ingenious, technology-led solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. Springboard offers students formal learning through essential skills workshops alongside opportunities to put their learning into practice, working in teams to develop solutions to a range of real client problems.

There are four workshops focusing on the following essential skills:

1. Consulting fundamentals (essential skill focus - Listening & Problem Solving)
2. Building relationships and teamwork (essential skill focus – Teamwork)
3. Creating and selling solutions (essential skill focus – Creativity)
4. Presenting and delivering ideas (essential skill focus – Speaking)

Springboard supports essential skills development at Level 2 for the following reasons:

• Springboard workshops consistently use the Skills Builder names, definitions, and icons.
• The programme incorporates an assessment of how confident the participant feels about the skills outlined above before and at the end of the programme.
• The Springboard workshops gives the participant an opportunity to practice using the skills during the session and then to further develop this during the week on their project work (see below)
• The workshops apply real life examples from PA Consulting client work to bring the skills to life in a work context for the participants.
• There is built in reflection time in each of the workshops enabling the participant to consider whether they have made progress in a specific skill, and how to progress their development of this skill.
• Outside of the workshops, the Springboard programme gives the participants the opportunity to practise their listening, problem solving, teamwork, creativity and speaking skills. Students work in teams (teamwork) to devise solutions to a client ‘problem’ (problem solving, creativity) which they present to their peers, PA and client stakeholders at the end of the week (speaking).