A Saturday job took me from shop floor to senior executive - young people deserve the same chance

What I found was the beginning of a career. With youth unemployment rising and employment reform on its way, the question Britain must answer is whether young people today will have the same chance I did.

What I found was something I had not expected: a job that gave me responsibility from the beginning.

They trusted me with customers, taught me how the business worked, and showed me that there was a genuine craft to what they did. Within months, I decided to train as a dispensing optician. Decades later, I am proud to be the Managing Director of Specsavers UK and ROI Optics. None of that was part of the plan when I first walked through the door.

In retail, my story is not unusual. One in five people started their careers in the industry - often with just a few hours on a weekend or a part-time flexible role that fitted around school or studies. Retail employs around 780,000 young people aged 16 to 25, accounting for almost a quarter of all youth employment in the country. For many, it is their first real experience of the world of work.

That first job matters in ways that go well beyond the wage. It is where you learn to show up on time and deal with difficult situations. It is where young people begin to understand how organisations work, how colleagues depend on each other, and what it means to be part of something. These are not soft skills. They are the foundation on which every career is built.

At Specsavers, we have always believed in growing our own. Many of our colleagues began as Saturday staff or optical assistants before going on to qualify as clinicians, move into management or become store partners in their own right. The path from first job to career is well-trodden with us - and deliberately so. We invest in people at the beginning because we know what that investment can become.

That model only works, however, if young people can get through the door in the first place.

Right now, more than a million young people in Britain are not in education, employment or training. Youth unemployment stands at 16 per cent - the highest it has been since 2015. Behind every statistic is a young person whose confidence is eroding with every month that passes, unable to find a foothold on the employment ladder.

Retail is uniquely placed to help. It is the country's largest private sector employer, offering flexible, local, accessible roles that require no minimum qualifications and can fit around study or family life. For many young people, a retail job is not just a job. It is the beginning of everything.

Flexibility is at the heart of why retail works as a route into employment. These are not nine-to-five roles. They are shifts that fit around college timetables, caring responsibilities and the unpredictable shape of a young person's life. Recent polling found that 67 per cent of part-time retail workers chose their role specifically because they needed that flexibility. For many, it is not a compromise - it is the only way work is possible at all.

That is why the implementation of the Employment Rights Act matters so much. The ambition behind the legislation - stronger protections, fairer conditions - is something most employers support. But ambition and outcome are not the same thing. If reforms treat flexibility as insecurity by default, the risk is that employers become more cautious about offering the very roles that give young people their first foothold. The people who lose out will not be those already established in their careers. It will be those trying to get started.

Government and retail must work together to get this right. Done well, employment reform can raise standards while keeping the door open for the next generation. Done badly, it risks quietly closing off the opportunities that make stories like mine possible.

I think about the person I was when I took that gap-year job. Uncertain, unplanned, looking for somewhere to begin. I was given an opportunity, and it changed everything.

Britain should never underestimate how much that moment is worth.

____________________

Carina Hummel is Managing Director at Specsavers.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk