The impact of COVID-19 on young people’s employability: the potential of sport-based interventions as non-formal education

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected young people in relation to their mental health, educational provision, and social development, impacting their employment prospects and future prosperity. In response, the United Kingdom government implemented a range of formal policy solutions to address issues around youth employability. However, studies are yet to examine how non-formal or alternative educational approaches, such as sport and physical activity interventions, can be used intentionally to enhance employability and tackle the youth employment challenges brought about by the pandemic. This article draws upon interviews with 20 organisations working within the sport and youth employability sector to provide insight into employment issues that have been created or exacerbated by COVID-19 and outlines how sport-based interventions might help to address these challenges. Findings demonstrate that the intentional use of sport and physical activity offers an attractive means to (re-)engage young people with employability programmes and support their preparedness for work, especially those furthest from an employment destination. The article also highlights how sport-based interventions can generate broader social impact, to address young people’s social and emotional difficulties, rebuild their confidence, and re-connect them with formal systems of education and training that many had become dislocated from during the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• sport-based interventions
• employability
• COVID-19
• mental health

Introduction

The global COVID-19 pandemic had significant health implications for millions of people and presented severe economic challenges for all countries that were affected. While it has become clear that the most direct health and mortality risk was experienced by older populations (Powell, Bellin, and Ehrlich 2020), the wider social and economic implications appear to have disproportionately impacted negatively on young people, particularly in relation to their educational and social development (MacDonald et al. 2023). Not only has this affected their immediate mental health and future prosperity as adults (European Commission 2022) but restrictions on social contact beyond the immediate household also led to increases in family violence, including violence towards children, and an escalation of cases of cyber-bullying, all of which have compounded mental health problems for young people (European Commission 2022).

In the United Kingdom, the specific context for this article, a similar picture has emerged, with the government imposed ‘lockdowns’ having a greater negative impact on youth populations than they did on other age categories (MacDonald et al. 2023). Notably, the effect of the pandemic on employment, economic participation, education, and training across the UK was substantial for young people. To illustrate, between March 2020 and March 2021, over 800,000 jobs were lost in the UK, with 54% of these being young people (Office for National Statistics, 2021). Furthermore, youth unemployment rose to 14.4% during 2020 (a 2.3% increase on the previous year) and the number of young people in employment fell to 51.9%, a decrease of 2.6% (Office for National Statistics 2021). While the UK labour market demonstrated signs of a recovery after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the long-term, delayed and indeed detrimental effects on young people’s confidence, motivation and preparedness for employment remains uncertain. Furthermore, such precarity has been experienced most acutely by families and communities that were economically disadvantaged before the pandemic, where the effects of COVID-19 have been exacerbated and existing inequalities deepened (European Commission 2022; MacDonald et al. 2023). Clearly, for those facing additional barriers to entering the labour market or those who are furthest from employment, the challenges which faced young adults pre-COVID in terms of their transition to economic independence (see Fahmy 2017) are even more apparent in the ‘post-COVID’ landscape.

Naturally, attempts to address these (and other) issues typically require government intervention and innovative policy solutions. In the UK, policy initiatives devised by Central Government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were contained within the Plan for Jobs, which announced £30bn in funding for a variety of schemes designed to support, protect, and create jobs in the wake of the pandemic (see House of Lords Youth Unemployment Committee 2021). However, despite the introduction of formal policies to address complex social problems, their success often hinges on complementary support from sectors of society which engage targeted populations in less formal ways (Ott and Dicke 2021). Of these, sport and physical activity has long been utilised as a complementary and wide-ranging solution to address perceived problems and act as an agent for social and personal change (see Coalter 2007; Haudenhuyse, Theeboom, and Nols 2013; Parker et al. 2019). Evidence also exists to demonstrate how sport and physical activity can be used as a type of non-formal education to intentionally enhance employability and tackle youth underemployment (see Burnett 2022, 2023; Morgan, Parker, and Marturano 2020).

Against this backdrop, this article seeks to provide insight into the employment challenges that have been created or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and outlines how sport and physical activity interventions hold potential to support formal efforts to address these challenges. In addition, the article will extend previous research by highlighting the mechanisms which may support (marginalised) young people into employment via sport and physical activity projects. Specifically, this article addresses the following research questions: i) to what extent do sport and physical activity interventions provide opportunities for young people to enhance their employability? and ii) what are the mechanisms within sport and physical activity interventions that support youth employability? The paper opens with a review of the youth employment context, highlighting the emerging impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is followed by an examination of the literature that has explored the instrumental use of sport and physical activity as an enabler of employment. Following an overview of the research design and methods employed during the study, the paper presents findings in relation to the impact of COVID-19 on young people; how sport and physical activity interventions might address these impacts; and how such interventions may enable pathways to employment or enhance employability.

Youth, (un)employment, and COVID-19

In parallel with many countries and jurisdictions, youth employment has been a significant policy focus for successive UK Governments. However, as youth employment policy is a devolved concern,¹ there is an absence of a comprehensive, UK-wide, youth employment policy or strategy (King 2016; Maguire and Keep 2021). While devolution has the benefit of enabling policy solutions that are better aligned to local needs (Drakeford 2010), it has led to employment policy being created in isolation, causing limited knowledge and policy exchange, and intensified a disparity in provision across the four UK nations (Maguire and Keep 2021). Consequently, the lack of Government department co-ordination and responsibility for youth employment has contributed to high levels of unemployment among 16–24-year-olds, and significant problems in identifying and tackling disadvantage and employment inequality, be this geographical, socio-economic, and/or demographic (Fahmy 2017).

In terms of tangible policy and practice interventions, a variety of approaches have been introduced in the UK, over a period of nearly three decades, to address the issue of unemployment in young people (Maguire and Keep 2021). Traditionally, interventions to address youth employability have centred on populations classified as NEET,² and have broadly fallen into two categories – ‘preventative’ and ‘reintegration’ strategies (Maguire 2021; Strathdee 2013). Preventative strategies typically employ ‘early warning systems’ using school-based data (e.g. levels of attendance and fluctuations in academic performance) to identify young people ‘at risk’ of educational drop-out, which often presents a barrier to accessing the employment market. In contrast, reintegration strategies are specifically targeted at those who have already dropped out of the formal education and training system (Maguire 2021; Morgan and Bush 2016) and often incorporate highly targeted active labour market policies (ALMPs) to stimulate the supply and demand for labour (McQuaid and Lindsay 2005).³ However, while these interventions often act as motivational strategy to both NEETs and potential employers (Morgan and Parker 2017; Seddon, Hazenberg, and Denny 2013; Strathdee 2013), they also tend to advantage young people who are ‘work ready’, thereby offering a significant barrier to ‘under-represented’ or ‘disengaged’ groups of young people (MacDonald et al. 2023; Maguire 2021).

The onus on supporting and developing young people who are ‘work ready’ aligns cogently with efforts to combat several longstanding drivers of youth unemployment (House of Lords Youth Unemployment Committee 2021). Among these drivers, specific skills gaps in young people have been highlighted as a major problem, whether in relation to the proportion of young people possessing low skill levels or the prevalence of skills shortages in particular industries. However, the negative impacts of these drivers have been further exacerbated in the last decade, where global economic conditions and austerity policies have meant that youth transitions into employment have become increasingly complex, conditional, and risky, where the task of entering and sustaining involvement in the labour market is often precarious and discontinuous (Fahmy 2017; MacDonald et al. 2023; Purcell et al. 2017).

In addition, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has created further issues for youth. According to MacDonald et al. (2023) these include adjustments to, or loss of, interpersonal relationships with peers, family, and/or social institutions; and interruptions to conventional forms of education, where ‘home-schooling’ has created challenges for many young people in relation to a lack of access to resources to undertake their learning. However, for MacDonald et al. (2023), the most significant effects of the pandemic on youth have been felt in relation to employment. These authors report that occupational sectors that faced relatively higher rates of redundancy, job loss, and furloughing in the UK (e.g. retail and hospitality) are typically overrepresented by young adults, and that, comparatively, young workers are more likely to undertake non-standard work in the ‘gig economy’, which was more exposed to job loss and employment uncertainty. Additional, less direct, impacts on employment trajectory included fears around career ‘stalling’, the necessity to undertake temporary or ‘less-than-desirable’ employment, and the loss of opportunities for placements and internships, all of which had impacted the development of a competitive CV and created widespread uncertainty, precarious career prospects, and, in some instances, psychological ill-being (MacDonald et al. 2023).

Sport and physical activity as an enabler of employability

While sport and physical activity is often not explicitly noted by governments as a policy response to youth employment challenges, academic evidence indicates the clear potential of interventions which utilise sport and physical activity to contribute to broader health and social challenges, including employment policy solutions (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020; Cunningham et al. 2020; Hermens et al. 2017). More specifically, such interventions often provide a cheaper alternative to many ALMPs, and have shown to promote further cost-savings by facilitating re-integration into education, training, and employment which enables young people to become active contributors to society through taxation and economic productivity as they transition from ‘NEET’ to employment destinations (Spaaij, Magee, and Jeanes 2013).

More critical literature has noted how sport-based employment interventions are often limited in their effectiveness, and typically only serve to support participants who arrive at the intervention in possession of some base competencies and are intrinsically motivated to engage with all aspects of the intervention (Spaaij, Magee, and Jeanes 2013). This observation chimes with a broader criticism of sport-based interventions which notes that as they are often targeted at certain disadvantaged or underserved groups that are considered ‘at risk’ of social exclusion, they serve to reinforce certain ideas about social class, race, gender, and their association with particular social problems (e.g. unemployment, crime, homelessness, etc.) that are politicised by nature (Hartmann 2016). Furthermore, sport-based employment interventions have been criticised for their apparent lack of transferability, where skills and attributes developed within the interventions do not often translate directly to the employment domain (Commers, Theeboom, and Coalter 2022), heightening career uncertainty and precarity (Moustakas et al. 2022).

Such perspectives echo longstanding concerns about sport-based interventions and their capacity to deliver broader social outcomes which elevate the ‘power of sport’ to an evangelical or mythopoeic status (see Coalter 2007; Giulianotti et al. 2019). However, as Spaaij et al. (2013, 1622) observe, very often the perceived effectiveness of sport-based interventions is often constrained by the narrow focus on how such programmes produce tangible results, such as ‘getting young people into jobs’, rather than on long-term and sustainable aims which are likely to lead to more secure and better paid employment (see also Burnett 2023; Commers, Theeboom, and Coalter 2022; Moustakas et al. 2022). In this sense, sport-based interventions which focus on the broader objective of enhancing employability (McQuaid and Lindsay 2005) and developing the knowledge, skills and attitudes that may provide opportunities within the employment market may provide a stronger foundation for assessing how sport and physical activity can support issues around youth employment (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020; Commers, Theeboom, and Coalter 2022; Hermens et al. 2017; Morgan, Parker, and Marturano 2020; Spaaij, Magee, and Jeanes 2013).

As a framework to examine the connection between participation in sport-based interventions and enhanced employability, Coalter et al. (2020) introduced a programme theory which proposes a series of five mechanisms that need to be present to optimise the intentional and instrumental use of sport to support youth employability. These include the necessity to i) utilise sport as a ‘hook’ for participation and provide a platform for engagement in more specific activities to enhance employability; ii) construct meaningful interpersonal relationships between programme participants and delivery providers; iii) ensure an individualised approach to the design of interventions; iv) include tangible, ‘plus sport’ activities that support employability; and v) provide specific post-programme support for participants who have graduated from the intervention and/or into employment destinations.

Academic research has long reported how sport can act as a ‘hook’ for engagement in interventions designed to support social outcomes (Coalter 2013; Morgan and Costas Batlle 2020), while other studies have illustrated the propensity for sport-based interventions to be effective in constructing meaningful interpersonal relationships between programme participants and delivery personnel (Coalter 2013; Morgan and Parker 2017; Spaaij and Jeanes 2013). In addition, research highlights the importance of a social climate in which participants feel safe, supported, and valued, and which allows participants to talk to programme staff openly and confidentially about their concerns, aspirations, and personal development (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020; Morgan and Parker 2022; Spaaij and Jeanes 2013). Correspondingly, the benefits of an approach which reflects the individual circumstances, prior experience, and motives of the beneficiary and provides structure and focus to their employment journey has been widely demonstrated (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020; Morgan, Parker, and Marturano 2021; Spaaij and Jeanes 2013). Nevertheless, in relation to specific sport and employability interventions, it is arguably the inclusion of tangible activities that support employability and the integration of post-programme support for participants who have progressed from the intervention and into employment destinations that is most critical (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020). While research notes that ‘sport-plus’ activities (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020), such as validated qualifications, workplace experience, and workshops which prepare participants to negotiate and enter the employment market, are typically evident, literature also indicates that post-programme support is often absent from sport-based interventions (Commers, Theeboom, and Coalter 2022) decreasing graduates’ chances for sustained employment (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020; Moustakas et al. 2022).

Given the evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread disruption to young people’s education and employment prospects (MacDonald et al. 2023), the veracity of sport-based programmes to offer an alternative approach to addressing youth employability issues requires deeper scrutiny. Consequently, this article seeks to illustrate how sport-based interventions hold potential to add value to policy solutions aimed to address issues for youth in the wake of the pandemic, and in doing so, provide programme designers and practitioners with a deeper understanding of the processes and mechanisms which might support youth employability through sport (Commers, Theeboom, and Coalter 2022).

Methods

The empirical findings featured here are drawn from a wider (mixed methods) study which sought to investigate the employment challenges that have been created or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the contribution that the sport for development sector⁴ can make in relation to enhancing employability and employment opportunities. The research findings presented here are drawn from the qualitative aspect of the study, which comprised of 19 semi-structured interviews.⁵ Framed by interpretivist paradigmatic assumptions, interviews were deployed as a method of generating meaningful data through open-ended, interpersonal dialogue (Amis 2005) with the specific intention of eliciting the subjective interpretations and personal experiences of representatives from a variety of organisations (both sport-based and non-sport) connected with the youth employability sector.

Following University ethical approval (Institutional Reference Number: EP 20/21 112), interviews were conducted online between January and March 2022, and lasted between 36 and 81 min (mean of 50 min). Interview participants were sampled purposefully from across a network of organisations that either designed and/or delivered sport-based interventions focused on enhancing employability, or from organisations concerned with youth employability that had experience of commissioning or funding sport-based projects (see Table 1). This sample provided a blend of perspectives and ‘information rich’ cases (Patton 2015), which was further diversified by recruiting interviewees from multiple geographic locations and respondents who worked in either ‘strategic’ and/or ‘frontline delivery’ roles.

Table 1. Study participants.

Pseudonym	Role	Description of organisation
Jane	National Operations Manager	Sport-based charitable trust
Andy	Head of Education and Employability	Sport-based charitable trust
Emma	Head of Foundation	Charitable foundation that funds sport-based projects
Ted	Chief Executive Officer	Sport and employability charity
Meera	Director of Design and Impact	Sport-based charity
Steve	Head of Education	Social enterprise focused on tackling youth unemployment
Emily	National Partnership Manager	Sport-based apprenticeship charity
Mark	Sport policy manager	Organisation overseeing further education in England
Hayley	National Director	Sport-based youth development charity
Tony	Head of Programmes	Youth and disability sports charity
Gareth	Sports Development Manager	Youth development charity
Julie	Chief Executive Officer	Sport-based youth charity
Rohan	Leadership Team	Youth development charity
Sally	Director of Innovation	Organisation offering qualifications in sport and leadership
Kayla	Programme Delivery Manager	Sport-based charitable trust
Brendan	Founder	Youth employment social enterprise
Amanda	Chief Executive Officer	Training and employment charity for young people
Jacqui	Head of Programmes	Youth volunteering and employment charity
James	Education Officer	Sport-based charitable foundation
Eleanor	Youth Advisor	Sport-for-development organisation
Salman	Youth Advisor	Sport-for-development organisation

Interview discussion topics varied between participants, but a semi-structured interview guide was devised to direct dialogue and allow sufficient flexibility for salient discussion topics to emerge during each interview (Kvale 2007). The interview guide contained a series of open-ended questions organised to explore in detail: i) the unique contribution of sport to enhance youth employability compared to other non-formal education programmes; ii) how sport-based projects might build qualities and attributes that are pivotal to enhanced employability; iii) particular issues in transference between the skills developed through sport-based interventions and those required for employment both ‘in’ sport and within broader sectors/industries; and iv) the challenges experienced by young people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews were audio-recorded using a digital Dictaphone and transcribed verbatim by a professional transcription provider. The interview protocol was co-facilitated by the research team to allow for an extensive set of ‘fieldnotes’ containing key discussion points and analytical memos to be captured during each interview. These data provided a supplement to the qualitative dataset and its subsequent analysis. All interview transcripts were reviewed by the research team and analysed in four stages, involving open, axial, and selective coding (Charmaz 2014). Consequently, transcripts were read in full to gain an overview of the data, before being individually coded and indexed to capture the different aspects of participant experience. These experiences were then clustered and inductively rationalised into a number of overarching topics, which were subsequently organised deductively into formal generic themes. These themes comprised: (i) the impact of COVID-19 on young people; (ii) the potential for sport-based interventions to addressing the impacts of COVID-19; and (iii) enabling employment and enhancing employability via sport and physical activity interventions.

Findings and discussion

The impact of COVID-19 on young people

While issues of youth unemployment have existed for several decades, the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have deepened inequalities and exacerbated the employment challenges faced by young people (MacDonald et al. 2023). Findings revealed that the pandemic, and in particular restrictions on social connectivity and the necessity for education and training to be conducted ‘online’, caused significant detrimental impacts on young people’s mental health. Respondents reported a significant increase in mental health concerns, such as a lack of motivation to work and/or study, which were intensified by the loss of social structures that supported young people’s development and general wellbeing. Echoing many similar testimonies, Mark, a sport policy manager for further education across England, reported that there is ‘an absolute mental health crisis within FE [further education]’. Offering deeper reflection on this reported crisis, Sally, the Director of Innovation at an organisation that awards qualifications in sport and leadership, revealed:

… the pandemic has definitely had an effect on the social value of young people. Just from the point of view that it took everything they knew from the community they lived in, the families that they lived with, and actually made it so that it was comfortable to be more of a hermit … I believe that we’ve not seen the full effects yet.

Consequently, some respondents indicated that rebuilding the mental health of young people should supersede attempts to focus purely on enhancing employability in the short term. For example, Brendan, the Founder of a youth employment social enterprise, commented that addressing the trauma that many young people had experienced during the pandemic was essential, highlighting that re-building the foundations of mental health in the young people he worked with was central to the ‘post-pandemic’ operations of his social enterprise. Referring to one of his programme participants specifically, Brendan explained:

… the trauma that they’ve [young people] experienced to expect them to go to work is like bonkers. Some of my young people [at the social enterprise] have lost eight friends - that is like so mind-blowing. It’s impressive that they get up out of bed at all … So now we’re trying to invest in getting therapeutic support for young people …

Nevertheless, the data were clear that those individuals who faced significant employment inequalities prior to the pandemic were further disadvantaged during and immediately after the government-imposed lockdown periods (MacDonald et al. 2023). For example, Rohan, from a youth development charity, reiterated other respondents’ views around the challenges to mental health that had been deepened during the pandemic, but also spoke of the many young people who they had engaged whose ‘distance’ to employment had been lengthened by being outside of formal education and training or who were classified as unemployed when COVID-19 struck. Rohan explained:

… the ones [young people] that really need it are the ones that won’t go out the house, that won’t travel to you [the charity hub]. That’s been made worse by the pandemic as well because you’ve got a lot of people with social anxieties out there, additional mental health needs and long-term unemployed. While the pandemic was about it’s almost that most people that weren’t employed through that period are automatically long-term unemployed and have had their world turned upside down because of what the pandemic has presented to them.

Other respondents outlined how the COVID-19 pandemic had created further dilemmas, which only served to challenge efforts to enhance young people’s employability or support their progressions into work. For example, Jane, the national operations manager of a sport-based charitable trust, provided an insight into the typical work-related challenges that, in her experience, many of their beneficiaries had faced. Often, these challenges were socio-demographic in nature, and included factors such as persistent cycles of parental unemployment (Dvoulety, Lukes, and Vancea 2019; Fahmy 2017; Maguire 2021). However, there was also evidence to indicate how disruptions to home-life, which were amplified by the pandemic, were equally impactful. Jane commented:

[Many have a] poor home environment, in terms of worklessness … not being surrounded by people who have a routine of work. Maybe being the only one in the house having to get up and go to work at 9 o’clock. All of those things can be a real challenge … [but] a big issue for a lot of our participants over the last 12 months has been living arrangements. A significant number would be living in supported housing arrangements, hostels, sofa-surfing, so on the cusp of homelessness.

Such insight illustrated how disruption to living arrangements, and life in general, had caused many young people to (willingly or otherwise) disengage with formal systems which supported them into employment. Several respondents highlighted difficulties in recruiting young people to their sport-based employment interventions, in particular when they had previously relied upon formal referral pathways involving statutory organisations, which had subsequently become disjointed or impaired during the pandemic. Moreover, the difficulty that many referral partners had experienced of maintaining contact with young people meant that many potential beneficiaries had become ‘lost in the system’ (Gray et al. 2022). Summarising many of the issues that were highlighted in relation to recruitment and referrals, Kayla, the programme delivery manager of a sport-based charitable trust, revealed:

I think for the young people themselves we’ve seen a change in their behaviours and attitudes … We’ve also seen a lot more anxiety about leaving home and being in big groups of people again … and because we get lots of referrals from partners, because those referral partners had lost that face-to-face contact with young people as well, they just lost touch and they had no links to young people anymore either …

Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic altered the landscape of the youth-focused employability interventions that we examined, with existing challenges being intensified and new challenges emerging which have created barriers to engaging young people with these (sport-based) interventions. However, the study also revealed that when young people’s attendance of such programmes was initiated or retained, there was evidence that participation in sport-based interventions could address several of these challenges.

Addressing the impacts of COVID-19 via sport and physical activity interventions

Several respondents outlined how they were using sport and physical activity instrumentally to address the broader challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic had created for young people in relation to their employability. Uppermost, were examples deployed into a range of different settings to directly confront the spiralling mental health concerns that were reported by respondents. For instance, Mark, a sport policy manager for further education, pointed to a wealth of sport and physical activity projects that were being initiated across the network of Further Education colleges in England. He revealed:

Sport across the board is a tool that lots and lots of colleges are using as a way of early intervention and prevention and some colleges have adopted a social prescribing model where students are referred on to sport or physical activity programmes as a way of supporting their mental health …

Others spoke positively about sport as a ‘vehicle’ to address pre-employment challenges and promote developmental messages about teamwork, leadership and managing conflict. For example, Emma, the Head of a charitable foundation which funds youth employability projects, acknowledged how sport acts ‘like a little microcosm for lots of situations that happen in the real world which young people might struggle to navigate sometimes’. These sentiments were echoed by James, an Education Officer at a sport foundation, who recognised sport as an alternative context for learning and one that ‘naturally gives a safe space’ for young people to express themselves and practice ways of coping with their emotions.

In addition, respondents spoke of the capacity of sport and physical activity interventions to operate as a metaphorical ‘bridge’ to reconnect young people with the formal systems and support mechanisms that had been compromised during the periods of enforced social restrictions. Building on narratives that highlighted the significant loss of confidence that many young people had experienced within social situations as a result of the pandemic (MacDonald et al. 2023), respondents illustrated how sport organisations had both recognised the challenges facing young people but were also able to utilise the sporting environment to re-build confidence and initiate (re-)connections with key institutions which were central to finding employment. This was particularly the case in efforts to support young people who had challenging personal circumstances and/or disrupted experiences of formal education during the pandemic, and were, consequently, often furthest from the employment market. Steve, the Head of Education at a social enterprise focused on tackling youth unemployment, revealed that, in his experience, sports clubs had the capacity to enhance self-esteem and help forge young people’s sense of identity:

… sport has a real potential to cut through to those young people, it can be a place for them to identify in that community. It [their sports club] might be the one place in their town or city that they actually don’t hate. We’ve had young lads who hate where they live but they love their club, and their club is the thing that’s got them back into education.

Similar support for the potential of sport and physical activity to act as a metaphorical ‘bridge builder’ to formal systems and mechanisms was provided by Meera who outlined how the sport-based charity that she worked for was able to facilitate a gradual reintegration with formal systems:

… the ‘system’ has failed a lot of these young people. We don’t want to put them [straight] back in the system. We want to get them ready, for themselves first, get them ready for their community second, and get them ready to join the system third.

Other testimonies confirmed the challenges that young people faced when navigating the often unwelcoming employment landscape that they encountered but provided insight into specific activities which were integrated around the sport and physical activity provision to (re)build trust and reconnection with formal systems. For example, when speaking about one of the organisations that they funded, Emma, a representative of a charitable foundation which funded projects that used sport (among other activities) to support youth employability, revealed:

I think that quite an important part of [sport and physical activity] is helping young people to navigate those systems, which can be not the most welcoming or easiest to navigate. [One of the sport organisations that we fund] did some training with the young people around how to navigate financial systems … helping young people to get bank accounts. You know, they’re often not young people who are engaging with the Job Centre before they come onto the programme, so they help [to connect] there…

Not surprisingly, as many sport organisations had been instrumental in reconnecting young people with formal systems, there were several examples provided in the data of these organisations continuing to support these individuals within and through them. Typically, this support consisted of facilitating access to Government-supported initiatives for employment, which often incorporated intentional active labour market policies (Maguire 2021). Importantly, data revealed how sport-based organisations were able to offer a broader range of support to young people who engaged with these initiatives when compared to more generic providers of employment-focussed training. In some cases, the support that could be offered was formal in nature, where the sport organisation acted as an identified and trusted partner in supporting Government employment schemes. For example, Andy, the Head of Education and Employability at a national sport-based charitable trust, explained how several professional football clubs had supported local Job Centre provision and hosted Youth Hubs⁶ across England. Andy continued:

… we’ve got a lot of our football clubs that offer the Youth Hubs … So, [a club in South Yorkshire] is a youth hub; they have the DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] work coaches based in [the club], and the young people go there, rather than the local DWP office.

Along similar lines, Ted, the Chief Executive Officer of a sport and employability charity, explained how his organisation had been an active partner in supporting caseloads in local Job Centres. Importantly, Ted illustrated the importance of relationship building for young people, and that members of staff who delivered sport-based programmes were often the trusted and accepted adults who could provide the regularity and consistency of provision that young people with challenging personal circumstances desired (Morgan and Parker 2017; Parker and Larkin 2023). Ted explained:

What we know is, when we [consulted] our young people, they wanted one person and one contact to support them. They really felt that they were pulled from pillar to post; different training providers, job centres, job coaches, different people … We have key relationships with different job centres across the region, and actually a lot of our mentors … often they might spend an entire day based at a job centre. So, there’s that relationship with them, they know what we do. It’s kind of a win-win.

These examples, and others like them, reinforce the clear potential that sport and physical activity interventions hold in both addressing the immediate detrimental impacts that young people encountered within and as a consequence of the pandemic, but also as a means to (re-)connect them with the systems that can support employability and pathways into work. Data indicated both the value of sport as an educational activity in and of itself, as well as the value added by organisations working with and supporting young people into employment. It is towards the latter that our analysis now turns, to illustrate in more detail how sport and physical activity interventions may act as an enabler of enhanced employability.

Enabling employment and enhancing employability via sport and physical activity interventions

As outlined above, Coalter et al. (2020) present a framework specific to the instrumental use of sport and physical activity to enhance employability and enable employment. Interview data demonstrated that these mechanisms were particularly evident within the design of interventions implemented by the organisations that engaged in the research. However, further analysis revealed deeper insight into which of these mechanisms may be more critical within sport-based employability interventions, along with some of the contextual challenges that often impede efforts to implement these mechanisms.

As noted, the use of sport and physical activity as a ‘hook’ to recruit participants to development interventions is well documented (see Coalter 2013). However, the heavy reliance on formal referral partners to recruit participants prior to the pandemic (Morgan and Costas Batlle 2020) and the subsequent challenges of connecting with these referral routes during and immediately following it, presented a significant barrier to engagement. One respondent (Hayley) reflected that recruitment and engagement needed to be simpler and more aligned to the needs and preferences of youth audiences, commenting that ‘it is easier to get a KFC delivered than to sign up for [a sports-based] programme’. Other respondents revealed that they had taken the conscious decision to rely less on formal and statutory services for their referrals and had instead opted to implement recruitment approaches which engaged young people directly. Meera, Director of Impact at a sport-for-development charity, provided one of the clearest examples of such efforts, highlighting the broader and longer-term benefits of using recruitment practices to not only engage but also to establish relationships with young people that were meaningful (Parker et al. 2019). Meera explained:

… the method that has been the most successful in our recruitment, is the recruitment that you do when you go out on the street … actually going out in estates, actually walking on the streets, looking for clusters of young people. Because that relationship that you start right there, they’re the relationships that produce so much more meaningful change … because you’ve proven yourself to be credible … It’s really, really tough work, but it is the most critical part, for me, of any employability intervention.

Recognising the need to respond to individual preferences and engage directly with beneficiaries resonated with testimonies that advocated the importance of a ‘strengths-based’ approach to intervention design and the specific activities that were incorporated. Several respondents revealed that, at a philosophical level, their interventions were focussed on building upon an individual’s acquired and demonstrated strengths (Paraschak and Thompson 2014), rather than repairing their perceived deficiencies. While terminology between organisations differed, there were several examples evident of respondents working ‘with’ (not ‘on’) programme participants (Morgan and Parker 2023) to further advance their acquired strengths and support individual aspiration. For example, Rohan, from a youth development charity, explained how they portrayed a strengths-based approach within their delivery:

… we do a lot of asset-based mentoring so the mentoring will be based around some sort of activity or interest that the young person enjoys, building up a trusted relationship with that young person, to then see if we can direct them or re-engage them with more mainstream services like school, college or going into an apprenticeship or a job.

A further example of how respondents responded to individual preferences and strengths was provided by Julie, Chief Executive Officer of a sport-based youth charity. Julie explained how participants of their sport-based programmes were empowered to become independent and responsible for how they navigated the programme and what they wanted to achieve through their engagement by taking control of their own progression outcomes and personal objectives. Julie continued:

We have developed an app … [where] young people set their own goals … they monitor their own progress, and they validate their own achievement. We do not give them a ‘pass’ or ‘fail’. That’s down for them to say, ‘I am now able to achieve this task’. … So, they use that lived experience and they share it with their mentor, and they get kudos, they get credit, they get encouragement.

A key finding, which may provide a further mechanism within sport and physical activity employability interventions, was the extent to which sport-based organisations had generated connections with potential employers to provide tangible employment destinations for their programme participants. While such connections were most obvious within organisations that supported apprenticeship opportunities for young people, several respondents outlined the importance of identifying employers whose values aligned with theirs to ensure that any work-related opportunities were meaningful for young people. For example, some respondents spoke of the necessity for potential employers to invest in young people and recognise that the individuals who graduated from sport-based interventions were often inexperienced and/or faced significant personal challenges which might impact on their progress as employees. Illustrating this point, Amanda, Chief Executive Officer of a charity that supports vulnerable young people into training and employment, remarked:

… we have had that conversation [with employers] that there will be some that are gonna (sic) mess up here, and, you know, we need to just be okay with that. It was good to have those conversations beforehand, but I think they’re [the employers] vested in the local area, so they wanted to make it work.

However, other respondents spoke of the challenges associated with partnering with employers who lacked specialised knowledge of working with some populations engaged by sport-based interventions. As example, Tony, the Head of Programmes at a youth and disability sports charity, expressed that, in his experience, the limited number of employer partnerships that sport-based organisations could boast was attributable to a lack of experience of providing employment opportunities for a more diverse workforce. Tony continued:

… when we’re talking about local organisations or local businesses, many of them don’t have experience or confidence or capacity, in working with the young people that we work with. So, disability [for example], there’s still very few organisations that have the confidence or accessibility or capability to step into that [situation] … I think that’s probably a big gap in the whole jigsaw … how can we make those organisations more confident, more capable, have better capacity to do that and play a significant role in that?

As one example of an organisation who had recognised and responded to this capacity challenge, Meera explained how her sport-for-development charity had been proactive in offering bespoke training to potential employers who agreed to engage graduates of their programmes. In doing so, Meera outlined how her organisation could extend an open and honest account of what employing one of their graduates entailed:

… we work with employers giving a real realistic picture of the nature of the journey [through the sports-based employment programme] … what does an inclusive employer look like for those most vulnerable, most likely to be unemployed for a longer period of time? … We use a lot of quite deep case studies … like they go through the whole detail, piece by piece, about what happened to them … That sometimes is good for employers. And sometimes it scares them a little bit, but we get through that barrier.

Clearly, the identification and establishment of employer networks present an additional, and pivotal, mechanism to enabling work opportunities for beneficiaries and graduates of sport-based employment interventions. Building upon the framework developed by Coalter et al. (2020), there is obvious potential for sport-based organisations to identify opportunities to broaden and develop these networks as a further enabler of enhanced employability.

Conclusion

Emerging evidence has highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has presented and exacerbated significant challenges for young people in relation to their education, social interaction, employment prospects, and overall mental wellbeing (European Commission 2022; MacDonald et al. 2023). This article has sought to examine how sport and physical activity may offer a potential mechanism through which these issues and challenges could be addressed, with a particular focus on sport-based employability interventions. In doing so, we have highlighted how sport-based interventions not only present opportunities to (re-)engage young people with programmes that may enhance employability (Coalter, Theeboom, and Truyens 2020), but also have the capacity to generate employer networks and partnerships which are critical to creating pathways into employment.

While the primary focus of the article has been to demonstrate how the intentional use of sport and physical activity can offer a potentially attractive alternative to (re-)engage individuals with employability programmes and support their preparedness for work, we have also provided insight into how sport-based interventions often generate broader social impact, especially for individuals who are furthest from an employment destination. Admittedly, our study is limited by a sample consisting only of individuals who design and/or delivery sport and physical interventions, as opposed to one that portrays the voices of the participants and beneficiaries of these interventions (a limitation that future research studies might address). Nevertheless, the findings exhibit that sport and physical activity interventions that have been deployed within the initial aftermath of the pandemic hold potential to address young people’s social and emotional difficulties, rebuild their confidence to reunite socially with peers, and re-connect them with formal systems of education, training, and health support that many had become dislocated from during the pandemic. Future research may seek to explore this line of enquiry more intently, especially as the full extent of the impact of COVID-19 on young people and their employability becomes more apparent.

It is important to recognise that our findings are not necessarily new and, as has been argued elsewhere (see Coalter 2007), we do not propose sport and physical activity as a panacea to address the manifold societal problems that young people face. On the contrary, we propose that when treated as an entity in and for itself, sport and physical activity is limited in its transformative potential (Morgan and Bush 2016). However, what our findings do demonstrate is that youth-focussed organisations, which use sport and physical activity intentionally for its perceived developmental value, regularly offer the necessary ‘wrap around’ support which can enable young people to develop confidence, build networks, and gain access to wider educational and social provision (Morgan and Parker 2022). Moreover, there is evidence from this study that such organisations can enact a vital role in supporting and sustaining formal (Government) policies and initiatives for youth employment. Consequently, we argue that sport-based organisations, and the sport for development sector more broadly, should be elevated from its position as a subsidiary to youth employment policy, and adopt a more central role with Government strategies to tackle youth employment inequalities. That said, one practical implication that arises from this view and the findings of this study is the necessity for stronger alignment of national employment policies and funding systems to enable the effective coordination of sport and physical activity interventions. In addition, a greater developmental focus on the workforce who deliver sport and physical activity interventions is a further practical consideration.

Clearly, more evidence is required to support our arguments, but investment into sport-based organisations that support youth employability requires detailed consideration. From a theoretical standpoint, future research should seek to examine the value of sport and physical activity, as a form of non-formal education, to complement efforts within formal education to enhance employability. Indeed, it is our contention that, with appropriate financial investment, the sport for development sector could build capacity, establish and strengthen existing networks, and champion the professional development of personnel within the sector, to optimise the benefits of sport-based employability interventions and offer a credible solution to the issues and challenges facing young people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Sport for Development Coalition.

Notes on contributors

Haydn Morgan

Haydn Morgan is Associate Professor in Sport Management at the University of Bath (UK). His research seeks to explore how engagement with sport and physical activity can act as a tool to divert or prevent engagement with crime and anti-social behaviour; may facilitate access into education, employment, and training; develop citizenship qualities; support community development; or enable young people to accumulate and enhance various forms of capital which are vital to their sense of inclusion and well-being.

Harry Bowles

Harry Bowles is Assistant Professor in the Department for Health at the University of Bath (UK). His research focuses on the developmental transitions of young people in and through sport, and the social determinants that impinge on youth experiences.

Anthony Bush

Anthony Bush is Associate Professor in the Department for Health at the University of Bath (UK). Anthony’s research is driven by an interest in the power of sport, in myriad contexts, to do good (and cause harm) at both an individual and societal level.

Notes

1. In some areas of public policy, including youth employment, the Parliament of the United Kingdom has devolved its legislative power to the national assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

2. For the purposes of this report, we draw upon the European Commission (2013) definition of NEET, which refers to ‘young people aged 18–24 who have only lower secondary education or less and are no longer in education or training’ (p.8).

3. Generally, five types of ALMPs are integrated into employment policy interventions – i) job-search assistance; ii) targeted training programmes; iii) subsidised employment; iv) direct job creation and public employment programmes; and v) start-up subsidies, self-employment assistance and support.

4. Sport for development is broadly defined as the intentional use of sport and physical activity as a conduit to achieving positive social change.

5. In total 21 participants were interviewed, as two organisations provided two representatives for their respective interview.

6. Youth Hubs were launched to tackle youth unemployment during the pandemic. They typically share spaces with local partners (such as local colleges, charities, training providers and local councils) to provide a drop-in centre that enables young people to access a range of services in one location.