Laurel is the latest young person to join our peer panel.

The peer panel is a group of 18 to 30-year-olds who represent and share young people’s views and expectations to employers to help them become attractive to future generations.

We first met Laurel through Voluntary Action Leicestershire and the Work Live Leicestershire project.

Meet Laurel

Laurel has been studying human bioscience at university, has previously been a youth worker and wants to be a cardiology researcher. 

Whenever we have a new peer panel member join, we ask them to tell us what they would want employers to know or change the recruitment process.

Here are Laurel’s messages to employers:

• Employers should provide feedback otherwise what is the point of spending all that time applying
• I have dyslexia and many application forms are simply too long. It would be great if employers could make the applications short and also enable the background colour to be changed to make it easier to read
• I am also autistic and like many people with autism, I am a literal thinker. So when it comes to questions on an application form, make sure the questions are straightforward and not vague 
• Autism can cause sensory sensitive too with things such as noise, light and smell. Employers should avoid using strip lighting and opt for toned downlights and also keep on top of the maintenance to avoid leaving lights that start to flicker.

By young people, for young people

Since launching, we have listened to young people and shared valuable insights on their views with businesses.

More recently young people have designed, built and delivered assessments for businesses and contributed to our training events.

Now the peer panel will help us make our future vision a reality which is to have Access Generation run by young people, for young people.

The peer panel members represent the voice of young people, help us to validate our research findings and will soon run a campaign to promote our new accreditation.

For employers

Do you know how to meet and match young people’s expectations? Find out more about the accreditation here.