By Sam Liu DSc Hons
Director, West London Chamber of Commerce
Last week at London Tech Week, I attended a strong panel organised by Tech She Can on social mobility in tech.
The discussion included senior voices from DSIT, the Social Mobility Commission and the Sutton Trust. It was encouraging to hear people at that level speaking seriously about access, opportunity and how we bring more young people into sectors that will shape the future economy.
But I left with a question that I think is highly relevant to the West London business community.
Why do we keep looking mainly to large employers and national institutions to solve social mobility, when so much of working Britain is built by SMEs?
Large employers have an important role to play. Their graduate schemes, apprenticeships and outreach programmes can open doors for many young people. But across West London, it is often small and medium sized businesses that provide the first real opportunity. These are the businesses where young people can be close to the work, close to clients and close to the people making decisions.
That kind of environment can be challenging, but it can also be life changing.
A young person in a small business is not hidden inside a large structure. They can be seen. They can be corrected. They can be encouraged. They can be given responsibility earlier than they might be elsewhere.
For many young people, especially those who are not in education, employment or training, that first serious opportunity can change the direction of their life.
Through my work with TechStart, I have seen this first hand.
We have been bringing together graduates, young people who were unemployed, and T Level students, and placing them into real working teams. The aim is not to give them another classroom-based intervention. It is to put them into practical projects, expose them to employers and trusted professionals, and help them understand what it means to take responsibility at work.
One example is Blanche, a law graduate from the University of East Anglia.
Through TechStart, Blanche has been given responsibility for helping run the Justice for All Series, supporting the Sheriffs of the City of London and helping deliver a major legal and civic programme.
For a young law graduate, that is a serious opportunity. Within her first year, she has been involved in events with keynote speakers such as Sir Geoffrey Vos and Lord Timpson, while meeting barristers, lawyers, former ministers and other senior figures who have been able to offer her advice about her future career.
That is not work experience in name only. It is real responsibility.
What makes this example more meaningful is the way the project has brought different young people together. Some of our young people who were previously outside education, employment or training helped build the websites and support the running of the events. They were not treated as separate from the professional work because of their starting point. They were included in it.
We were also able to involve T Level students, giving them access to the Central Criminal Court and helping them understand its history and role in public life. Brunel Law School students also attended and heard from people such as David Gauke, the former Lord Chancellor and Head of Public Policy at Macfarlanes. Macfarlanes is also a firm that has supported the social mobility of Brunel graduates through its training programme.
This is what can happen when opportunity is created properly.
A graduate is trusted with responsibility. Young people who were unemployed are brought into the delivery. T Level students are given access to a professional setting. Law students hear directly from senior people in their field. Employers, universities and civic institutions are connected in a practical way.
The second example comes from our technology programme.
We took a Warwick graduate, trained him in London and gave him responsibility for developing a retail technology solution. This was not a simulated project. It was a real commercial challenge that required him to work on hardware, design chip boards, develop 3D printed parts and understand how a product is built, tested and improved.
He was sent to the Far East to develop the solution further and later flown to Las Vegas to exhibit at CES.
That is a significant opportunity for a graduate at the start of his career. He was not simply attending as a visitor. He was there to represent the work, explain the product and understand how it stood up in an international market.
He later went to NRF in New York, where it became clear that the solution was not yet strong enough.
That is real business. Sometimes the market tells you that the product needs more work.
What matters is what happened next. The sponsor did not give up on him. They extended his contract, sent him to Shenzhen to look at more technology that could be incorporated, and are prepared to spend tens of thousands of pounds to help him exhibit again next year.
That is what serious backing looks like.
It is not just giving a young person a title. It is giving them responsibility, letting them experience pressure, supporting them when something does not work, and expecting them to improve.
The impact has gone beyond one graduate. That project has created opportunities for our young people who were previously unemployed to travel, attend major technology events, meet businesses and see how technology is developed and sold. It has shown them that the world of work is much bigger than a job advert or a rejection email.
One young person came to us after being unemployed for two years. He could not get a job at Card Factory. Through TechStart, he moved into paid work, joined a team and was exposed to international business and frontier technologies.
That should make us stop and think.
If a small initiative can take someone from that starting point and place them into paid work with access to serious opportunities, then we should be asking how to support more initiatives like it.
This is where I believe the Chamber movement has an important role to play.
West London has an extraordinary mix of businesses, universities, civic institutions, sports clubs, charities, technology companies, hospitality businesses, creative organisations and professional services firms. We do not lack talent. We do not lack ambition. What we often lack is a joined-up way of turning that into real opportunities for young people.
SMEs are central to this.
But we also need to be honest about what it takes for an SME to take on a young person. It costs money. It takes management time. It affects cash flow. It requires patience, supervision and the ability to keep client work moving while someone is still learning.
For a small business, that is a real commitment.
If government, councils and larger institutions are serious about youth employment, they need to make it easier for SMEs to take part. That means practical support, not just invitations to meetings. It means funding that reaches delivery, not only organisations that are best placed to navigate procurement. It means recognising that employers already taking risks with young people should be treated as partners, not afterthoughts.
There is also a role for businesses themselves.
Not every company can create a full programme. Not every employer can take on a young person immediately. But many can offer a project, a mentor, a site visit, a paid placement, a first interview, a talk, or a few hours of practical advice.
Those steps can mean far more to a young person than people realise.
The question is whether we can turn these individual acts into a more coherent local effort.
As a Director of the West London Chamber of Commerce, I believe this is exactly the kind of conversation we should be leading. Business is not separate from social mobility. Business is one of the main ways social mobility happens.
When young people are trusted with work, introduced to employers and given access to professional environments, their confidence grows. When graduates are given responsibility early, they move faster. When T Level students are treated as part of a team, they begin to understand what they are capable of. When young people who were unemployed are given paid work and proper expectations, their whole outlook can change.
This is not theory. We have seen it happen.
The challenge now is to create more of it.
West London has the businesses, the institutions and the talent. What we need is a stronger commitment to connecting them in practical ways.
If we are serious about youth employment, then SMEs must be part of the answer.
And if we want more SMEs to step up, we need to back them properly.