WIDE NETWORK OF HOST COMPANIES
Work Placement Abroad
With the increasing need for highly skilled workers, businesses around the world consistently require technical and vocational education and training, which in turn helps to improve methodologies, evaluation mechanisms and practices. In this ever changing area, IMY Work Placements and IMY Study Visits are the first and winning choice, with a solid track of effective and smooth handling of learning mobility initiatives.
In order to meet this increasing demand for a specialized workforce with continuous learning activities, enterprises have started to use study visit experiences that merge commercial business purposes with learning objectives. CSCS started its IMY learning mobility initiatives in 2005.
IMY Work Placement
The IMY Work Placements are usually two to twelve weeks providing participants with full immersion in a real work environment, carrying out concrete and agreed tasks within an established work position. The IMY Work Placements are suitable for learners at the end of their studies or for workers who need training in a specific or innovative context, to acquire skills that cannot be learned with traditional instruction methods, in a relatively short period of time and with unbeatable effective results.
The main reasons behind the tangible success of IMY method is the combination of business experiences and business contacts with a wide range of social events, such as cultural visits and other social interactions that are essentials for durable change, in terms of both personal and professional development.
Due to the impressive results obtained in a timely manner, enterprises are focusing more and more on IMY Mobility Work Placements as opposed to traditional on-site training. With the continuous and changing demands of workforce requirements, a full immersion training experience in a different cultural and organizational work environment has been proven to be more effective than traditional learning settings, as standard instructional processes tend to separate the teaching phase from the application and validation of the knowledge gained.
During IMY Work Placements, learners interact directly with a wide range of peers and co-workers, living a new and full immersion experience and become rapidly productive in their new workplaces.
Workers develop curiosity and ambition while striving for success. New inputs and new requirements within a different work environment enable the learners to be more flexible, versatile and creative while acquiring new skills and becoming more productive.
Assignment of the work placement
Trainees are invited to upload their personal data onto the IMY online platform, such as CV, motivation letter, passport and all other documents necessary to formalise the exchange. They may also have a telephone or email interview with IMY staff which focuses on defining their professional profile, their training needs and the objectives of the work placement.
The list of skills and learning outcomes developed by this process, structured according to ECVET and EQF principles, constitutes the basic contents of the work placement contract produced by IMY which is to be signed by the trainee, the host company and the CSCS educational tutor.
IMY staff identifies the companies interested in hosting the trainee on the basis of each individual’s profile, qualifications, professional experiences and desired activities.
During the delicate first phase of the process, IMY staff are always at the trainee’s disposal to provide any necessary assistance, from uploading data online, to helping define skills and foreseen objectives, as well as any other enquiries.
The more information the trainee provides, the better and easier it will be for the IMY staff to understand the profile and expectations of the trainee, and hence to select the right company and work place.
- IMY provides assistance in all aspects of the work placement
before the arrival of the trainee in Italy, throughout the entire internship and even after the trainee’s time in Italy
Our companies
IMY has a wide network of selected enterprises across Tuscany and these are strategic resources to match the right internship opportunity with the expectations of the individual trainee. The main provinces covered by IMY programme in Tuscany are Pistoia, Lucca, Montecatini, Florence and Prato. These areas can provide any kind of enterprise, from micro artisan settings to multinational operations. The matching of the trainee’s personal profile and the work placement is made by a combination of electronic tools, based on algorithms that consider standard data and statistics, together with the direct experience and knowledge of the IMY pedagogic staff.
Italian legislation requires that a work placement contract is signed between the trainee, the host company and the intermediary institution. IMY is a Vocational Educational and Training institution officially approved by the Regional Government of Tuscany and can therefore act as the intermediary institution and direct the contract.
The work placement contract contains all relevant information about the internship: start and end dates, working hours, the company’s legal status and address, project work and tasks to be accomplished by the trainee.
By law, IMY issues two types of insurance policy: covering the trainee against injuries and against third party damages.
- The IMY competence based approach
Photo from La Casa del Fiore, Host Company, Pistoia
Preparatory phase
- Analyse the trainee's characteristics, CV and expectations
- Define the objectives of the placement, content and duration
- Identify a company offering a work placement that matches the trainee's needs
During the work placement
- Monitoring the progress of the placement
- Ensure continuous communication among the trainee, us, the company and the sending educational institution abraod via our own database
Final phase
- Analyse and evaluate the results of the work placement, in terms of competencies, skills and abilities gained
We continuously monitor and evaluate your activities in order to produce at the end the Europass Mobility Certificate which contains a declaration from the company about what you have done and what you have learnt during your work experience.
When you join us, you have access to our online platform which gives you the opportunity to register all the activities you do all along your work experience. You receive feed-back from us and all your information is visible and accessible also by your supervisors in your own country.