Apprenticeships offer many fantastic benefits to everyone involved.
Becoming an apprentice allows you to earn a wage while studying towards a qualification and gaining valuable skills and experience. It’s also an opportunity to make new friends and develop your confidence.
Completing an apprenticeship can really help you get a permanent job. In fact, there are many examples of apprentices being offered a job by the employer they have been working with.
Services can also hugely benefit from apprentices, who can offer an extra pair of hands, fresh and innovative ideas, new skills and more. All this can help to improve the service for patients.
Read on to find out about a hugely successful apprenticeship programme in Oldham and how you can get involved in future opportunities.
Leonda Scrivens, administration and community child health manager:
We were really keen to welcome some apprentices into our team, so we partnered with local training provider, Damar. We provided the apprentices with work experience and Damar supported their qualification and training.
The apprentices joined our Oldham community services’ administration team, which supports all of our community-based physical health services (such as speech and language therapy, district nursing and many more.)
The support that we offer apprentices is incredibly useful for starting a career with us. At the beginning of the programme, they learned about the organisation’s structure, health and safety, policies and procedures. The apprentices also work in a number of different services during the programme, which gives them a taste of the many career opportunities available within our Trust.
Since joining us 12 months ago, our apprentices have grown in confidence, improved their communication and customer service skills and learned how to manage many different situations.
They have a fantastic work ethic and play a major part in every team they work in. They are very fast learners who develop new skills every day. We have been hugely impressed by how reliable, adaptable, willing to learn and enthusiastic they have been from the very beginning.
Our staff and apprentices are learning new things from each other all the time. The apprentices have fantastic computer skills and are teaching our staff new ways of working.
Our staff have also been able to develop their leadership skills, through acting as role models for the apprentices.
The support provided by Damar has been excellent. The apprentices have regular meetings with their assessor. Progress is fed back to their manager, which is really helpful.
Our apprentices have become a valuable asset and we really encourage other teams to look into offering apprenticeship opportunities. It is important that managers recognise the need to invest time in their apprentice’s development. However, the benefits they bring far outweigh this time commitment.
I have some vacancies and I am hoping that they will be successful in securing these positions.
We are over the moon with our class of 2018 apprentices. We could not be prouder and want them to succeed in everything that they do. We have also gained a personal sense of achievement that we have contributed to their development.
Mahbub Ahmed, business admin apprentice
I have always wanted to work within the NHS but didn’t want to go to college or university full-time. An apprenticeship was the best option for me as I could earn a wage while getting hands-on experience.
I love that my job enables me to get an insight into what my colleagues do, as my role is to support and help the team manage their daily workload.
I have enjoyed moving around different teams while meeting different people and learning how different departments use a variety of techniques to do their job.
I truly believe that the programme has helped me learn different skills which I have already been able to apply in my job.
I highly recommend an apprenticeship to anyone who doesn’t want to go to college or university and would rather learn and earn.