Employers’ perceptions of the benefits of university-level placements for placement providers

The purpose of this paper is to explore employers’ views of the benefits of providing university-level placements. While numerous studies have analysed the impact of placements on students, their impact on employers has rarely been considered. The focus of the paper is on employers providing short in-curriculum placements outside of structured extra-curricular internship schemes for Geography and Environmental Science students. Employers participated in semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis was undertaken. The benefits most commonly discussed by employers are students bringing new perspectives to the employer, students supporting employers’ recruitment ‘pipelines’, and students providing employers with additional capacity for work. The context in which the employer works is shown to be important in influencing the benefits that employers receive from engaging with university-level placements, and the study shows that developing placements in ways which make the most of students’ skills and strengths can help to ensure that placements are a mutually beneficial experience for students and employers.