The Status of Internships: Paid or Unpaid Internships


- Internship Rights and Responsibilities

- Intern vs Employee

- Internship Dilemma

- Internship Solutions


Ever wonder why, during your work experience that your employer would be reluctant to give you any specific tasks and responsibilities? That, during the majority of your internship you would just hang around asking for work and all the employer could do is make up menial tasks to occupy your day.


Despite more demand for internships and a wealth of available talent, more and more there is a general reluctance from many organisations in this day and age to accept graduate students.


The question that many organisations are asking themselves is at what point does an internship become full time work and what is the difference between hiring an intern or an employee?



What rights and responsibilities do each have and what are the organisational requirements?


This specific agenda has been for the last couple of years a legal mind field of ambiguity, especially for graduates who are looking to gain some work experience in times of economic peril.


For current student the guidelines set up from direct.gov.uk make it quite clear who has what right and subsequently what are the interns entitled to.


Student who are participating in an internship on behalf of their studies as part of their course or related to their further education and studies are for instance exempt from the NMW. Students who are also taking part in one of the European Mobility Programmes such as the ERASMUS or Leonardo de Vinci programme are exempt from the NMW.


From an initial assessment of the recommended guidelines established by the direct gov, the internship placements should be either paid or the intern should do the placement for specifically their own benefit and are subsequently not meant to provide any service for the host organisation or receive any form of benefit in kind or compensation.


When you read through the guidelines, you can quickly notice that this means that if you are a graduate looking to gain some practical work experience you can either stand around or work shadow or be a volunteer worker.


At a closer examination you can understand why so many companies are refusing graduates and only taking on current students and those with a mobility programmes or scholarships.





The problem is at what stage do you consider an intern to be an intern or when are they an employee?


For many companies the purposes of interns is to provide young people with the opportunity to gain practical work experience, to understand how the job market functions and in some situations to secure employment after the successful completion of the internship placement.


The only drawback is that as a graduate you are not entitled to work. You are not to be given any projects, deadlines or assignments. No responsibilities and no rewards. By definition if you are graduate intern and you work in an unpaid internship, you are not even allowed to make a cup of tea for anyone as you are providing a beneficial service to the company in doing so. In a sense it would seem that the government despite its pledges as built a system that is anti-internship in its approach.


In accordance with direct gov, even providing training would be considered a benefit and as such not permitted. As a result it is no wonder why we hear about so many internships where the student or graduate felt under fulfilled in their internship.


If you take the opportunity to read through interns anonymous you will find many a testimonial from interns who were not given the satisfaction of productive learning. Where on many cases the employers were not permitted to provide the intern with relevant training and support, as this would in turn be a beneficial service to the company and as such would breach direct.gov guidelines.




The Internship Dilemma


On the one side of the argument you have over 1 million graduates unable to find work. You have a government that is proposing setting up employment schemes like the Graduate Talent Pool to enhance internship placements and you have graduates who would love to gain the experience they need whether paid or not.


On the other side you have numerous agencies selling internship placements as an open market to the rich and desperate who would like to stand out from the pack. According to reports from the Telegraph News Paper, companies and agencies are charging as much as £8000 for placement opportunities in and around London.


Overall though, as stated on the graduate talent pool “It will then be for graduates to decide whether the benefits of taking up the internship outweigh the fact that it is unpaid”


While there have been a few companies who have seized the employment climate to maximise their return through internships, for many though an internship is a short term lesson in how the real world of work operates. While it may seem as a difficult step to climb to get on the employment ladder, by comparison to previous generations the graduates of today should set more realistic ambitions and practical goals and not be concerned about the short term short-full.


An internship whether paid or unpaid, is designed as a short term glimpse into the world of work to provide prospectives students and graduates with relevant skills to help them in their future career.


It is by no means a sure-fire means of ensuring future employment and is just one of many employment schemes available for people today.


If you have any opinions on the status of internships in the UK feel free to join the discussion today. Whether you are pro-internship or anti-internship at Internship UK we would like to hear your stories and opinions.






Stephen McAllister Internship Solutions


Immediate Solutions

  1. The Government needs to bring a clear guideline consensus towards the status of graduates and internships: This will allow companies and graduates to get on with business. Especially with the current business climate where businesses are reluctant to take on extra staff and literately counting their pennies. On average around 500 companies are going bankrupt every week, they could have been saved if they received an extra employment boast to tide the waters over with an extra intern to assist in the work.   

  2. Put a limit on the duration of an unpaid internship. Legally allow graduates to take part in unpaid internships but limit duration to a maximum of 60 days. (this way graduate can gain an insight into the respective field of their choice without any long term commitment or financial investments)

  3. To offer similar mobility programmes for graduates and students in the UK for internship and work placements to be in line with the rest of Europe. (Financial aid and scholarship programs to help potential interns)

Long Term Solutions

  1. Make work experience mandatory for all students during their studies to have a proper tangible work experience. This will eliminate the graduate gap of employment as students will have credible work experience along with their degrees. (This will bring students closer to our European counter parts in Holland / France / Germany etc) – The drawback is that this will take years for institutions to implement this policy to see effective changes in work experience programs.

  2. Scrap the work shadowing notion. (the only way to learn is to be learn by actively doing.) - In my opinion work shadowing goes against all notions of effective learning. (People hanging around watching others will not only not learn but will also lose their motivation to learn) Overall, a lose / lose situation.





Article Notes:


During my research for this article I had contacted several agencies who charged a fee to place interns. (for many students and graduates this is becoming common practice) These agencies on average charge a fee of £500 to pass on a CV to potential employers. Furthermore, several agencies now charge higher rates from £800 + for the student or graduate to acquire a placement.


In addition, there are several European country agencies that charge students for internship placements across the UK.


What the agencies had informed me was that if you are a graduate and that you are from the UK you are not eligible for many of the internship placements available.


Several of the agencies informed me that their main target audience were continental Europeans as an internship is part of their studies or that the student is on part of a wider European Mobility Program.


From an international perspective, several companies that I had contacted informed me that there were less likely to take on international graduates in paid positions. For many international graduates they are increasingly becoming barred from gaining work experience as companies are un-prepared to take the financial risks with the candidate. This is partly due to the interns language and comprehension skills, as this may make them more of a financial risk than gain.