Too many graduates enter the workforce with a qualification, but without a meaningful opportunity to prove what they can do in a real workplace.

Practical experience remains difficult to access, unevenly distributed and impossible to provide at the necessary scale through traditional internships alone.

For HEX, this challenge connects to a commitment made nearly a decade ago.

In 2017, HEX joined the Pledge 1% movement.

Since then, HEX has moved from pledge to practice.

Through official partnerships with Atlassian Foundation and Automation Anywhere, HEX has brought real business challenges and employee expertise into WorkSim experiences that help learners build confidence, capability and practical evidence of what they can do.

Now, HEX and Pledge 1% are working together to help more companies do the same.

From Individual Commitments to Shared Infrastructure

Pledge 1% is built on a simple idea: businesses can have a greater impact by leveraging all their assets for good.

This collaboration brings that idea to one of the most urgent challenges facing young people: the widening distance between completing an education and feeling ready to contribute in a real workplace.

For a movement powered by companies choosing to give something back, working with WorkSim, powered by HEX, sends an important signal.

Closing the graduate experience gap should not be left to individual companies acting alone. It is worth building shared infrastructure around, so that more employers can contribute and more young people can benefit.

A New Collaboration

HEX and Pledge 1% are collaborating to connect Pledge 1% members with WorkSim, HEX’s workplace simulation platform that gives learners authentic work experience before their first day on the job.

Pledge 1% inspires, educates and empowers companies to use their assets for good by pledging 1% of their time, profit, product and/or equity. WorkSim converts one of those resources, employee time, into something young people urgently need and cannot access equitably at scale: meaningful exposure to how work actually works.

Through the collaboration:

• Pledge 1% community members will have the opportunity to volunteer their time and provide digital work experiences to WorkSim participants.
• HEX, through WorkSim, will enable member employees to contribute authentic project ideas, industry expertise, mentoring, coaching and learner feedback.
• Together, HEX and Pledge 1% will co-create the future of the workplace through a virtual learning experience for students from anywhere, while educational institutions can tap into student progress and results to continue supporting future employability preparation.

“Company time is one of the most powerful resources businesses can contribute to their communities, but it can also be one of the hardest to activate meaningfully and at scale. WorkSim gives our members a structured way to share their expertise, support young people and help expand equitable access to career-building experiences.” - Pledge 1%

Why This Matters for Pledge 1% Members

Pledge 1% members want their commitments to create meaningful, measurable impact.

WorkSim provides a structured, ready-built way to put employee time and expertise to work. Employees can participate directly in experiences that help young people understand and practise real work.

Member employees may contribute by:

• Co-designing authentic projects based on real business challenges
• Sharing industry knowledge and professional insight
• Mentoring and coaching learners
• Providing feedback on project work
• Helping learners understand workplace expectations
• Supporting the development of skills needed for an AI-enabled future of work

For participating companies, the time pledge becomes something tangible and repeatable: a practical way to support youth career readiness, engage employees and invest in the future talent pipelines their industries will eventually depend on.

It contributes to the infrastructure young people need to transition from education into work.

Building on a Proven Foundation

This collaboration is not beginning with an untested idea.

HEX has already created official WorkSim partnerships with Atlassian Foundation and Automation Anywhere (both existing members of Pledge 1%), demonstrating how companies can translate authentic business challenges and employee expertise into scalable learning experiences.

The wider WorkSim ecosystem also includes RMIT University, Stone & Chalk and a growing network of universities, government agencies and industry partners.

Together, these organisations are responding to the same underlying challenge: AI is reshaping early-career work, employers increasingly expect evidence of practical capability, and traditional internship models cannot reach every learner who needs experience.

The old pathway of waiting for a limited internship opportunity does not scale.

WorkSim creates another path. Learners complete authentic projects, interact with simulated workplace teams, receive feedback and build practical evidence of their capabilities. Companies contribute the insight and expertise that make those experiences real, without being expected to manage thousands of individual interns.

“We joined Pledge 1% in 2017 because we believed impact should be part of how a company grows. Since then, we have seen what becomes possible when companies contribute not only resources, but real expertise and real work."

Through our partnerships with Atlassian Foundation and Automation Anywhere, that belief has become a practical model. This collaboration with Pledge 1% will help more companies turn their time pledge into meaningful experiences that build young people’s confidence, capability and access to opportunity.”

Jeanette Cheah, CEO, HEX

What Happens Next

Pledge 1% member organisations can activate their time pledge through WorkSim participation.

Opportunities will range from contributing authentic project ideas and industry insight to mentoring, coaching and providing structured feedback to learners.

Young people should not simply inherit the future of work.

Through WorkSim, the Pledge 1% community now has a direct and structured way to help build it with them.

Learn more about WorkSim, powered by HEX.

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