Before going on your placement, your placement must be approved by the University’s Work Experience Team to ensure that it is suitable for your course or your module. This information is relevant for all types of placement, but not Health and Social Care placements or Education placements.

Your placement will require approval from 4 people: your Placement Provider (who will confirm the placement details are correct), you (to confirm you’re satisfied with your placement provider’s responses), your Academic (to confirm the placement will meet your learning outcomes) and the Work Experience Team (who oversee the whole process). Allow time for delays but never start your placement until fully approved.

To get started, you will need to know:

• Which academic needs to approve your placement (this will be on your placement or module blackboard site), and their email address
• Who your line manager will be, and their work email address (this should be from the organisation’s domain name, not a private email address)
• You will need to have completed the Health & Safety: Professional Preparation for your Placement training module
• You will need to have discussed the Health & Safety aspects of your placement with your placement provider
• You will need to know what your learning outcomes are for your module/course (this will be on your placement or module blackboard site)

Then you’re ready to submit a request to approve your placement in Handshake. Watch our short video on how to do this:

Stage 1 - requesting an experience approval

If you’re an undergraduate student and your course has both a work experience module that includes a ‘Short placement (in module)’ and an ‘Work placement year (sandwich)’, this process is the same for both types of placement – but be careful to select which type of placement you are requesting approval for!

Once you have submitted your request, the Work Experience Team will review the information you provided and they will perform an initial check of the information before forwarding to the first approver, your placement provider. This will be the person you identified when you initially submitted the information for approval.

Stage 2 – reviewing the placement provider information

Your placement provider will need to verify the information you provided is correct, and they will also need to answer some specific questions in relation to your placement. For example, in relation to their Equality, Diversity & Inclusion policies and Health & Safety. Once they have approved your placement, you will receive an email asking you to review their responses and to click approve.

Watch this 2-minute video on what to do at this stage:

Once you click approve, that’s everything you need to do at this stage. The next approver is the academic you identified at the start of the process. Your academic may have some questions for you to answer before they approve the placement, so check your emails regularly.

Track the progress of your approval

You can track the progress of your placement approval in Handshake on your Experiences Dashboard. If it looks like one of the approvers hasn’t responded, try contacting them to ask them to look at it.

If you think you gave an incorrect email address for one of the approvers, you can check this in Handshake and contact the Work Experience Team if a correction needs to be made.

Changes to your placement, additional placements

The approval is in relation to one placement only, as described at the time you initially submitted the request for approval. If your placement has changed, e.g. your placement start / end dates, you must notify the Work Experience Team if a correction needs to be made.

If you’re not happy when you start your placement and you’re thinking about swapping to a different placement, get support on placement before you make any decisions; once your placement is approved, you’re expected to stay on that placement because it’s now part of your degree.

If you secure another placement, you will need to request approval of that placement as a new placement. This includes any placements you want to do after you complete your first placement, e.g. if you’re planning to do 2x 6-month placements.

If you are converting a Short Placement (in module) to a Work placement year (Sandwich) you will need to request approval of that placement too as the learning outcomes will be different, and your responsibilities should also be different.

Fraudulent/fake placement details

When you submit your placement details, you are verifying that the information provided is genuine and accurate. If the Work Experience Team suspect that your placement is not genuine, your course team will be informed and this will be treated as a student conduct and disciplinary matter under the University’s Rules and Regulations.

Hybrid working, fully on-site working

All placements at Sheffield Hallam undertaken during the placement year of your course must include a minimum of 1 day per week working on-site at your employer’s premises, or equivalent location which is owned and/or managed by your employer. This means the University will no longer accept placements which are proposed as fully remote working now that exceptions made during the Covid-19 pandemic have come to an end. 

Questions about the process?

The Work Experience Team oversee the whole process, so they might be able to help if it’s a question related to any of the technical aspects of the process or if you need advice in relation to anything one of the approvers has mentioned in their responses.

If it’s a question about your learning outcomes, or which Applied Professional Diploma setting to choose (for Work placement year (Sandwich) approvals), your Academic Adviser or an academic from your module or course team can help you with that.

What happens once my placement has been approved?

You will receive an email once your placement has been fully approved. When you have received this email you are ready to begin your placement. The placement checklist might be helpful for you to consider the practical things you might need to do before you start. If you’re going on placement outside the UK, find out about International Placements.