A great opportunity to share your professional expertise 

Getting in to work can be a key factor in reducing reoffending following a prison sentence. Creating links between prisons and employers is crucial to ensuring that people leaving prison move into stable work. Employment Advisory Boards (EABs) were launched to bring business expertise into prisons. The Boards work with prison Governors and staff to ensure that serving prisoners use their time in prison to gain the skills they need alongside links to job opportunities so that they can leave prison and move into sustainable employment.

Leaders in HR have a key role to play in guiding prisons to prepare prison leavers to successfully rejoin the labour market. They know what employers are looking for and have the strategic vision to hold prisons accountable on employment. We have partnered with the New Futures Network, a specialist part of HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), to increase the number of people professionals on EABs in prisons. We’re looking for senior people professionals to lend their expertise to their local prison and change the lives of prisoners by sharing their valuable perspective.

Joining an EAB is a great way to use your professional experience to make substantive social change. Supporting prisons to improve their approach to employment can help more people move into work following imprisonment and break the cycle of reoffending. To find out more, click on the link below.

Please note that the CIPD Trust and New Futures Network connects you with your local prison but each EAB Chair and Prison Governor chooses and elects the official membership of the Employment Advisory Board.

Employment Advisory Boards

Employment Advisory Boards (EABs) cover more than 90 prisons across England and Wales. They were devised by James Timpson (then Chief Executive of Timpson’s Group, now Prisons and Probation Minister) to bring together business leaders and people in prisons. Each Board is chaired by a business leader and takes it’s membership from business networks, other leaders within local communities, organisations which support the transition from custody into the community, and people with lived experience of the prison system.

The role of EABs is to advise, support and challenge prisons on their training and employment offer to prisoners and prison leavers. Their goal is to see more people leave prisons and enter sustainable employment. They do this through encouraging businesses to engage with the prison, advising on the training and workshops delivered and creating a positive culture of employment within the prison.

About New Futures Network

The New Futures Network brokers partnerships between prisons and employers. These partnerships help employers fill skills gaps and provide work for serving prisoners and prison leavers.

New Futures Network brokers three types of partnership:

1. Prison industries: when businesses set up commercial workspaces in prisons, staffed by serving prisoners. These range from construction to carpentry, coding to call centres and more.

2. Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL): when risk-assessed prisoners leave prison each day to work for employers in the community. This can be for a full working week, over an extended period.

3. Employment on release: when employers offer opportunities to prison leavers. This can be after seeing a prisoner work in a prison workshop, or in a workplace on ROTL.

Partnership between CIPD Trust and New Futures Network launched