Elevating Youth Worker Voice: A Guide for Organizations Supporting Young People in the Workplace

This toolkit is designed to help employers support young workers and empower them to advocate for their needs in the workplace. Some organizations, like nonprofits that specialize in job training and job placement, social enterprises that employ youth, and workforce development organizations, are all uniquely positioned to support young people due to their organizational positioning and values.

The authors interviewed 27 leaders across different types of organizations that serve young people and scanned existing literature and tools to learn about what guidance was needed to help employers support youth worker voice. This toolkit provides approaches for listening and supporting young people within an organization, advocacy skill building for youth workplace needs, helping employers make space to listen to youth and act on their ideas, and empowering youth to elevate their voices in policy conversations. Each chapter of the toolkit summarizes key goals of each approach, identifies specific strategies that organizations can use, and provides practical tips for employers.

(This toolkit is 38 pages long.)

Original title: Elevating Youth Worker Voice: A Practical Guide for Organizations Supporting Young People in Their Transition to the Workplace

To better listen to youth voice in an organization:

• Train every adult staff person about adultism, approaches to youth engagement, and trauma-informed practices so adult staff members are equipped to work with and listen to young people.
• Gather input regularly from youth and create structures to use their feedback. Organizations can conduct individual check-ins, small group meetings, or anonymous surveys.
• Prepare to receive and use feedback by intentionally planning for feedback loops, creating processes to follow up with youth, and offering compensation for participating in feedback.
• Include youth in decision making and operations like offering roles on boards, leading staff meetings, and training colleagues in those positions to support and engage with young workers.

• Train young people on workplace rights including health and safety, youth-specific laws, equal opportunity protections, and immigration rights in the workplace. Consider partnering with worker centers or labor rights organizations to lead these trainings.
• Teach skills like communication, self-advocacy, and understanding workplace realities in ongoing trainings or conversations. These skills include knowing and using workplace-specific norms, payday basics, written communication norms, and structural realities of working.
• Model healthy workplace cultures through roleplaying, individual coaching, small group workshops, and workplace simulations.

To encourage and help employers make space for youth voices:

• Vet and be mindful about the employer partners. Consider the way they allocate resources, train staff, and hire employees.
• Train employer partners about adultism, effective engagement strategies, and cultural awareness.
• Give employees opportunities to learn from one another, share data, and process together.

To elevate youth worker voice in policy and discourse:

• Provide leadership training and advocacy training to youth workers, which could include leadership skills, public speaking and communications, media engagement, and organizing strategies.
• Engage youth in research about the topics that affect them. “Conducting research in partnership with youth enhances the development of strategies that are reflective of youth needs while also providing opportunities for youth to build valuable skills” (p.24).

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2023
• Author(s): Scott, M.; Sirois, M.; and Spaulding, S.
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Damon Jones
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies