How the Pensions Regulator adapted to offer remote placements

The Pensions Regulator regularly offers placements to university students, where they experience working within the Frontline Regulation Directorate at its headquarters in Brighton. Despite the challenges brought by the Coronavirus pandemic during 2020, the organisation continued with this approach. 

Sophie Mina Yazdian-Tehrani, Frontline Support Manager at the Pensions Regulator, is line manager to University of Brighton placement student Cristina Beskaly who is studying Law with Business. Sophie explained how the placement has been working. 

“We on-boarded Cristina completely remotely, sent her laptop and equipment via courier and conducted all of her induction training via video conference. We had already carried out an induction remotely in March so it was pretty straight-forward, and we check in with her every day.” 

Cristina will be with the organization for 12 months, working within a team of 30 which includes case managers, business analysts and actuaries. Cristina told us how she is finding her first work experience:

“The placement is great I really love it. I love the team; I love the people. Everyone is being very, very supportive.” 

Her placement gives her experience of working on projects across different departments, taking minutes for the case teams and learning how to undertake profiling. Cristina explains: 

“They got me involved in everything, as soon as I started the first week, they gave me stuff to do on my own just to learn and to practice and basically improve by myself.” 

Sophie said: “We invest a lot of time in our placement students and the success rate has been brilliant so far. Our students work with professionals at many at different levels in the organization including litigation lawyers, analysts and actuaries, and their tasks include bundling documents in preparation for a legal trial. It’s valuable experience for both their degree and future career.”