Self-employment feasibility study: consultation findings

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Institute for Employment Studies (IES)

What Works: testing youth employment interventions ·

Institute for Employment Studies (IES)

Research & evaluation partner

ProgrammeWhat Works: testing youth employment interventions

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Overview

The research team conducted in-depth interviews with young people, and organisations already providing self-employment support, to understand what support young people would need to consider a move into self-employment.

Who was consulted?

Representatives from 12 organisations operating at regional and national levels across the voluntary, public and private sectors with experience of delivering self-employment support interventions – several of which were targeted at young people.
21 young people aged 18 to 30 based in London and the North-East. 30% of young people were NEET, 30% were gig or platform workers and 40% were in low paid or insecure work.

The interviews focused on:

how young people view self-employment
barriers young people face in pursuing self-employment
how to identify and reach young people who may benefit from self-employment
what an effective self-employment support intervention for young people would look like
possible outcomes a self-employment intervention could deliver

The consultations showed the value that a self-employment support intervention could deliver in making young people more informed about what self-employment involves and helping them move forward into self-employment if suitable for them.

Key insights

Young people:

have conflicted feelings about self-employment – interviewees recognised the benefits of flexibility, autonomy, and personal satisfaction, but also see self-employment as risky and unfeasible due to fear of failure and potential financial loss
feel that there is a lack of accessible support, training, and resources to help them fill knowledge gaps about how to run a business
feel financial support is needed as part of a support package to set up a business
value one-to-one support from a business adviser or mentor as a key ingredient for a self-employment support intervention

Support organisations:

feel they need to fill the knowledge gaps for young people about the pros and cons of self-employment and help them come to an informed decision about whether it is right for them
say they could help young people find ways to overcome financial obstacles without getting into debt
value one-to-one support from a business adviser or mentor as a key ingredient for a self-employment support intervention.

Some support organisation reported feeling that their purpose was to give young people options about next steps, which could include ways to increase their existing income.

This may be an attractive option for young people to start experiencing some of the benefits of self-employment without all the risks of doing this full-time.

Next steps

These findings, along with those from the Targeted Rapid Evidence Assessment and Secondary Data Analysis have been used to develop an outline of what a support intervention for young people considering self-employment would look like.

To understand if this works in practice as a self-employment support intervention for young people, the next steps would be to fully develop, implement and test the model.