From networking conversations to classroom impact: two SMEs opening up careers

03 Sep 2026

Matthew Ibbs of MGI Learning and Charlie Clark of Minty Digital turned everyday expertise and personal experience into practical workshops for pupils, showing how relationship-led support can help smaller businesses become confident careers partners.

Small and medium-sized enterprises make up around 94% of businesses in the capital and employ an estimated 50–60% of workers. Yet they were underrepresented among employers pledging to the Central London Careers Hub’s Employer Charter.

For many smaller businesses, the barrier is not a lack of interest. It is uncertainty about what schools need, whether their experience is relevant, and how to hold a room of young people. The Hub’s Industry Partnerships team used Federation of Small Businesses networking events to begin those conversations in person.

Two meetings led to two very different school offers. With follow-up support, Matthew Ibbs and Charlie Clark each shaped a workshop, joined the Employer Charter and moved from tentative interest to direct engagement with pupils.

Turning experience into a school offer

Matthew adapted his work on customer service and high-trust teams into We Could Be Heroes, a 60-minute session for Years 8 and 9. Pupils treated ‘soft skills’ as superpowers, built Hero Sheets, and worked in squads to explore self-awareness, team balance, and the support networks around them.

Charlie built a workshop around digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and the different ways people can work. Drawing on his experience of rebuilding his career after a prison sentence,a part of his story he gave permission to share,he showed how resilience, self-employment, and practical digital skills can create an unconventional route forward.

Two workshops, two routes into confidence

At Notre Dame RC School, Matthew’s workshop helped pupils recognise qualities they already used. The school’s Careers Leader praised the way he made teamwork and self-awareness memorable through creative metaphors and practical group activities.

At a second school, Charlie combined his personal story with hands-on business tasks. After the session, 36 of 41 respondents (88%) said the activities were well organised and easy to understand. The school reported that students valued meeting a real business owner and seeing a route into digital careers that did not depend on one conventional pathway.

The wider pattern was also encouraging. In the academic year covered by the review, 24% of the Hub’s Charter activities were linked to SME engagement led by the Industry Partnerships team through the Let’s Make it Work campaign. That figure shows the contribution smaller employers can make when the first step is designed around confidence and relationship-building.

Building a repeatable route for SMEs

The approach was deliberately relational: meet employers where they already gather, listen for the experience they could offer, help translate it into a clear learning activity and make a purposeful introduction to a school.

A participating Careers Leader said students described Charlie’s workshop as “one of their favourites” and particularly valued his story, activities, and openness about becoming a chief executive.

The next step is to make the evidence as strong as the relationships. Consistent pre- and post-session questions, together with follow-up on repeat engagement, would show whether the workshops improve career readiness and whether the new partnerships become sustained.

For now, the two examples offer a practical lesson: SMEs do not need a ready-made school programme before they get involved. With thoughtful support, the skills they use every day can become meaningful encounters that widen young people’s view of work.