By Kiranjeet Kaur Thind, Erith School

Work experience is a great opportunity for both employers and students.

It is great for students because it is a chance for them to familiarise themselves with the workplace, and distinguish the difference between school life and work life.

A quote from a work experience student helps to summarise the benefits of work experience: "It has helped me greatly with my career choice."

This shows that work experience placements help students with the direction of the career choice at a vital point in their studies.

Students can also strengthen their skills and qualities, which they may notice to be weak during the placement; this will help them later in life so they will know their strengths and weaknesses quickly.

Work experience also helps students to come to a decision about staying on at school and developing their knowledge or leaving school to get a job. This is an important choice and work experience can greatly influence it.

It can also encourage pupils to work a lot harder to achieve much more so they can get a high-paying job. This kind of motivation could turn the lives of some students around.

This is also a valuable experience for employers because they can understand how the young mind works and they are able to see how they can benefit themselves from it.

A supervisor who has worked with work experience students had this to say: "It was great working with a young student and teaching them new things, especially as they are so eager to learn!"

The employer can also be influenced by the ideas from the younger generation that the work experience students consist of, and they can improve their company as necessary and advance to a better operation of the workplace.

Work experience placements also show the employer how young people and anyone new to the business adapt to the type of work that needs to be done.

Employers are also at an advantage with work experience students because they can get a lot of work done and they don't need to pay the work experience student.

The employer can also observe which skills need to be used and which qualities are needed as they help the students learn and gain knowledge of the business, this will help them in running their business because they can learn how to improve the workplace for other new employees.