I have worked within students’ union advice services for over a decade and, until last year, nothing struck more fear into me than the suggestion of involving students in our advice centre staff team.
What if students don’t feel comfortable sharing sensitive issues with peers? What if student staff accidentally breach confidentiality? What if casework logging errors skew our vital statistics?
While I loved the concept of student involvement, the perceived risks kept the idea firmly in the “too dangerous” category of my mind whenever it surfaced.
Fast-forward to late spring 2024 when my colleague and I had been single-handedly running the advice service (supporting around 2,000 students annually) for over six months due to unforeseen staffing challenges.
The reality of operating at reduced capacity with such demanding caseloads had taken its toll.
When one of us was unavailable – due to illness, annual leave, or meetings – the other faced an impossible task. Keeping pace with appointments, phone calls, emails and drop-in enquiries felt like scaling an endless mountain.
From doubt to opportunity
Every workday became a battle against overwhelming demand. Exhausted, we faced our busiest summer period. The prospect of running the service single-handed during our most emotionally and logistically intense period seemed insurmountable. Something needed to change.
It was at this critical point that our senior leadership team invited departments to make cases for recruiting student summer interns. This opportunity had been available in previous years, but we’d never considered it viable for our advice service.
However, given our challenging circumstances, my colleague and I immediately recognised this as the lifeline we desperately needed.
Students changing everything
We recruited two student interns to support us over the summer and, between student consultations, invested time teaching them how to triage queries, document everything in AdvicePro (our casework management system), and provide initial guidance and signposting.
Since this was our first experience involving student staff, we focused their responsibilities on staffing the welcome desk and triaging drop-ins. This involved listening to immediate student concerns, providing initial information, booking appointments and signposting to appropriate services.
To our delight, everything clicked into place remarkably quickly.
Our interns provided vital operational support while genuinely enhancing service delivery. They offered immediate attention to students as they visited, eliminating waiting times for initial contact.
When students needed full appointments with advisers, they didn’t mind waiting because they’d already been heard by our interns – and we noticed students opened-up much quicker with peers than with professional staff.
Unexpected opportunities emerged too. Our interns contacted students with inactive cases to check if they needed further support. They also gathered service feedback during these calls, increasing our service feedback survey response rate by 30 per cent compared to the previous academic year.
All our initial fears proved completely unfounded.
Confidentiality remained intact, documentation was meticulous, and the peer connections they formed with students achieved something professional advisers simply couldn’t replicate.
The start of something bigger
The benefits became too significant to limit to summer, compelling us to extend the model into the new academic year.
We tasked our departing interns with creating training materials for the next cohort of student “advice assistants,” leveraging their unique student perspective. Their documents, presentations and videos now form core induction materials with unparalleled relatability.
One intern continued as an advice assistant, offering experienced peer support to newer team members. Our other intern, though graduating, was so inspired by the experience that they began applying for professional adviser positions.
Seven months into having a team of student advice assistants, they now provide frontline triage, conduct case follow-ups, collect service feedback, undertake campus outreach, and represent the service at student events.
Their contribution has been transformative, and we’ve never looked back.
Looking ahead, we’re taking our assistants in another exciting direction.
Alongside their current responsibilities, they’ll also play a key role in our union’s insight work by conducting face-to-face student interviews across both campuses.
We’ve already seen great success in boosting project response rates through a similar approach with our insight assistants this year. We believe this approach offers a powerful dual benefit – allowing for natural peer conversations while also identifying students who may need support and connecting them to the right services.
It’s like combining superpowers, helping individual students in the moment while gathering valuable insights to improve the student experience for everyone.
To any advice services not yet involving student staff, I strongly encourage you to reconsider. Beyond offering valuable experience to students, they might just be the magic ingredient your service never knew it needed.
A magnificent example demonstrating the potential of the next generation when given the opportunity to contribute and excel. A clarion call for others to do likewise as appropriate to their situation.