Closing the Organisational Know-How Gap: Reflections from Our Roundtable
At the Commercial Education Trust (CET), we believe workplace readiness is about more than qualifications. It’s also about the organisational know-how that lets people navigate professional life confidently and yet this is often left unspoken.
Last month, CET convened a roundtable with partners and early-career professionals to tackle this challenge head-on. In collaboration with Speakers for Schools, 2040 Leaders and The Brokerage, we brought together educators, employers, and young people to ask:
How can we make the invisible curriculum of work more explicit and more equitable?
The result is our new Organisational Know-How Roundtable Report, which you can download below.
Why this matters
Too many young people, especially those without family or community networks in professional settings, face avoidable barriers early in their careers. They’re expected to pick up unwritten rules on their own and from how to ask for feedback to understanding workplace culture.
Our roundtable discussion underscored that this isn’t simply an individual problem: it’s an organisational one. Employers who invest in clearer expectations, better manager training, structured work experience, and peer support don’t just do the right thing and they build stronger, more inclusive teams and improve retention.
A shared responsibility
Participants also emphasised the importance of partnerships between educators and employers. Schools and colleges can help prepare students earlier by making workplace expectations visible. Employers can design work experience and onboarding to be truly developmental, rather than a box-ticking exercise.
Together, we can ensure that success at work is not left to chance or “hidden rules”, but supported intentionally.
Explore the full report
The Organisational Know-How Roundtable Report offers practical recommendations for educators, employers, and policymakers who want to take action.
We’re pleased to share it here so that others can learn from the discussion, reflect on their own practice, and help close the know-how gap.
