Sabina Kadić-Mackenzie
Drip. Drip. Drip.
From the age of 15, this was the soundtrack to my Saturday mornings.
At the local factory, my job was to make oil filters for subsea and offshore. The drips were the grease; my teenage nostrils thick with the smell of industrial lubricants. My colleagues were men, all older, all lovely, with a certain taste in workplace humour.
I have never been one to stick to convention (babysitting wasn’t for me). Instead filtration technology got me out of bed every weekend. The pay packet, brown envelope in cash, helped.
One filter at a time, my weekend job set me up for the world of work and continues to shape my ambition and confidence. I learned about punctuality, the value of money and how to do a task properly even when it’s boring. Every young person should have the same opportunity.
The Saturday job is dying, however. Fewer than one in five 16 and 17-year-olds now work, compared with nearly half at the turn of the century. The paper round has all but vanished; retail has moved online; schools pile on pressure and parents fill weekends with activities designed to burnish university applications.
That may be about to change. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently moving through the House of Lords, would give under-16s more flexibility to take on part-time work. Alan Milburn’s recent review of youth unemployment makes the case plainly: too many young people arrive at adulthood unprepared for the workplace.
But change is afoot. A new generation of under-16s is about to have the opportunity, and flexibility, to take on weekend and part-time jobs, including before school.
Understandably, there is concern about safeguarding children, young people’s wellbeing and their rights. But the benefits overwhelmingly outweigh the risks. Far from being a threat to childhood, weekend jobs can be transformative.
But just because they have the right to work, doesn’t mean all will rush to roll up their sleeves.
That’s where employers come in. Not with glossy recruitment videos or lists of competencies, but with something simpler: let a 15-year-old see what a working day actually looks like. Invite them in. Give them something real to do. Trust them with a task that matters, even a small one.
Do that, and something clicks. A 15-year-old girl assembling oil filters on a Saturday morning starts to see a version of her future self. She doesn’t know yet that she’ll end up advising some of the world’s best-known brands on strategy and reputation. But she’s learning that she can show up, do the work, and be taken seriously. That’s where it begins.
Those who want to should have the opportunity to kickstart their working lives with the support and encouragement they need from leaders who once, too, walked nervously into a first job.
A career in oil filtration might not be for everyone.
But opportunity must be.