BUILDING products group Marshalls is making work experience more inspiring for young people.

Graham Holden, chief executive of the Birkby-based paving supplier, was among 50 Yorkshire business leaders to take part in the Big Conversation – an event staged at Leeds Metropolitan University.

One-to-one conversations between business leaders and young people took place as part of a national Work Inspiration campaign, which encourages firms across all sectors to review or improve the work experience they offer – to make it more relevant and inspiring.

The campaign is led by Business in the Community, education foundation Edge and the Talent and Enterprise Taskforce.

Yorkshire is the first region to take the initiative forward – thanks to support from regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, Young People’s Enterprise Forum and the regional education and business partnerships.

The campaign, which is led by Sir Stuart Rose, executive chairman of Marks & Spencer and chairman of BiTC, has also launched a website for businesses to sign up to the campaign, find out more information and to download the employer toolkit.

About 265 organisations – including Marshalls, Yorkshire Bank and Northern Foods – have agreed to support the campaign.

At the Big Conservation, employers were taken through three easy steps to help them improve their own work experience activities – a one-to-one conversation between the young person and a senior manager; looking behind the scenes of a business so a young person can see how their abilities and skills relate to different jobs in a workplace; and letting them meet a range of work colleagues to learn of their varying career paths within a particular organisation.

Suzy Alderson, executive director of YPEF, said: “Businesses that succeed in giving young people a broader understanding of the different roles within an organisation are helping to create a more confident and ‘job ready’ generation which can only be a good thing for business.”

Businesses can find out more and sign up to the campaign www.workinspiration.com