The objectives of DCU Access to the Workplace are aligned to NBI’s mission, which at its heart, is all about equity and fairness.
We recognise that one of the biggest challenges facing rural Ireland is the digital divide with urban areas. To remedy this situation forever, NBI is delivering high-speed broadband infrastructure to every household, farm and business in our rollout area. No town, village or community will be left behind under the National Broadband Plan.
Similarly, DCU’s Access to the Workplace Programme recognises that students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and neurodivergent students find it harder to secure high-quality, fully paid, professional work experience in established workplaces; and therefore, the university puts the supports in place to support access to quality internships, ultimately with social mobility in mind. We see the parallel and share the sentiment.
At NBI, we believe that better broadband networks promote social progress, equality and sustainability. With equal access to local, national and global opportunity, every person, community and organisation in Ireland will be empowered to achieve more; so supporting DCU’s Access to the Workplace Programme was a natural extension of this mission.
The NBI team is deliberately diverse in order to encourage the brightest thinkers and doers of today to build a more connected tomorrow. Our team comes from everywhere. From the four provinces of Ireland (we employ people living in every county in Ireland) and the four corners of the world (20 different nationalities), we’re truly a global team with a local mission – connecting friends and families for generations to come.
The DCU Access to the Workplace Programme has validated our approach and reinforced the fact that diverse backgrounds lead to different conversations, alternative solutions and positive outcomes. We hope to build on this experience in the coming years.
2024 was NBI’s first involvement in the Access to the Workplace Programme; and it was a great experience for the team. Our Access to the Workplace intern, Matthew, was an excellent team-player and showed high engagement, energy and enthusiasm. The NBI team greatly benefited from his thirst for knowledge, his questioning nature and his ideas.
NBI, in consultation with DCU, created a programme of work for the internship that showcased a wide range of our operations – so he had exposure to a lot of different activities and was able to get experience across a range of different teams.
Where possible, we have looked to support our employees’ families by taking on transition year students or college placements where we could align business needs. However, I’ve always been aware that this reinforces issues around access to the workplace, so we had been looking for a way to solve for that – hence our involvement in the programme.
We were delighted to be able to offer a placement to a student who otherwise would not have had access to that kind of experience. The team believe that was a positive experience for Matthew; and if nothing else, highlighted the potential he has to contribute to an organisation like NBI. NBI would recommend that organisations participate in the programme, or at least engage with the DCU team to find out more and understand if the programme is a good fit. The information exchange and the preparatory work between DCU and NBI definitely contributed to a positive experience throughout the placement.
