Capita, one of the UK’s largest outsourcing companies, has come under fire for a graduate scheme that involves up to four months of unpaid training.
The company, which provides services ranging from electronic tagging of offenders to store card services for retailers and BBC licence fee collection, has advertised a number of roles in its IT resourcing division that stipulate applicants must be a graduate and able to attend a eight to 16 weeks of unpaid training in London or Manchester.
The Novus Development and Implementation Programme encompasses roles include software developer, IT business analyst and test analyst, with salaries ranging from £24,000 to £27,000 on completion of the unpaid training period.
“Upon completion of the training you will be placed on site with one of our prestigious blue-chip clients and working on some of the most exciting projects across the UK,” the ads state.
The job ads say applicants should be committed to the programme for two years. However, Capita told the Guardian that, while “the majority” of those completing the course would be employed either directly by Capita or by one of its clients, applicants were not guaranteed a job.
“The training provided is free of charge with a combination of classroom and distance learning,” the company said. “The course is designed to allow the participants to continue undertaking work and other activities outside of the free training. The objective is to bridge the gap between graduate-level experience and the requirements of employers, enabling graduates to overcome barriers and enter a sector with high opportunities for career progression.”
Capita, which last year announced plans to axe 2,000 jobs and replace some workers with robots to save money, said the Novus programme was separate from the group’s main corporate graduate and apprenticeship schemes. The company employs about 73,000 staff in Britain, Europe and South Africa.
Tanya de Grunwald, founder of careers blog Graduate Fog, which first revealed the unpaid traineeships at Capita, said: “However, Capita tries to frame it, the structure of their graduate scheme is bizarre – I’ve never seen anything like it.
“Rather than recruiting graduates and then training them as salaried employees, they are appear to be training them as non-employees and then choosing whether to recruit them, presumably because it is cheaper. Dressing this up as a ‘free of charge’ opportunity really takes the biscuit.
“A cynical observer might say this is Capita doing what it does best – ruthlessly minimising its own costs,” he said.
She said that graduates were being forced to fund themselves during the training period while gambling on being one of the lucky ones hired by Capita at the end. “It’s a big gamble: living in London or Manchester for four months is likely to cost them around £4,000,” she said.
Michael Newman, an employment law specialist at law firm Leigh Day, said Capita was taking a chance by signing up unpaid trainees.
“There could be an argument that this is training that falls outside national minimum wage legislation but I don’t think that would hold water,” Newman said.
“Who is going to bring a national minimum wage claim against an organisation where they want a graduate position? You are not going to do that if you are trying to start your career at Capita,” he said.
