We are often approached by businesses who want to know more about Apprenticeships. Many have had some dealings with them in the past or have a particular perception of them. We try and give people the right information so that they can make an informed decision about their involvement. In this short blog I aim to address some key points including outlining details of the £1500 grant currently available to employers for each Apprentice they take on.

Two uses for Apprenticeships for your business:

Apprenticeships can be used to motivate and drive quality amongst your existing staff as well as inject fresh blood into your organisation with very low risk. Full support and training is provided by us on your premises so as to limit the impact of travel, day release or evening classes on your staff and your business.

Qualifications take between six months and a year to complete (depending on the chosen level, discipline and the learners/employers pace of learning) and are worth 5 x GCSE's grades A - C (at level 2) or 2 x A levels (at level 3).

Key Apprenticeship facts:

Employer responsive (Employed people):

·     Open to anyone aged 16 - 65 - it's a popular miss conception that they are only aimed at very young people

·     Qualifications can be designed specifically to suit your needs, goals, directions

·     Delivery of qualifications is flexible, and delivered 100% on your premises - so you don't lose your workforce every week or so. Instead...

·     Candidates need to contribute about an hour per week plus spend about two hours per month with their personal tutor - did we mention private tuition is standard???

·     We deliver additional key workshops and seminars FREE of charge to increase the value of the training to your business.

·     Proven to improve staff morale, improve output, improve service delivery, and improve client relations and revenue.

·     Proven to lower staff absence/sickness, lower staff turnover, and lower incidents of conflict.

Learner Responsive (Aimed at finding people aged 16 - 24 work)

·     Approximately 958,000 young people aged 16 - 24 are not in education, employment or training in England today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/23/almost-1m-young-people-neets?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

·     Growing living costs and big University fees are turning a lot of talented young people off the normal academic routes and towards the workplce. However employment opportunities are not available to plug fulfill demand.

·     Apprenticeships let employers take a young person on full time for just £2.60 per hour - no added taxes, no hidden costs. Compared to the college route (where a student earns nothing) this lets a lot of young people (and their parents who haven't been given adequate time to plan for University fees) off the hook financially. The training allowance of £2.60 per hour also means that a young person can concentrate and give your business 100% attention and not have to work nights or weekends to earn money.

·     Apprentices can add great value to business - bringing energy, fresh thinking and a willingness to their role.

·     Employers only need sign a temporary contract (for the duration of the training) to make huge impact on the learners chances of gaining full employment - if they don't snap them up themselves.

It is worth emphasising that the recruitment and selection process for Learner responsive Apprentices is entirely FREE.

·     Employers can create a profile and job advert (with our help)

·     We advertise the post

·     We vet the learners

·     We pass you only the most suitable CV's

·     We arrange the interviews to suit you

·     We sign the learner up to their programme - designed specifically to your needs

·     We deliver all training to suit YOUR diary - on your premises 100%

·     We complete the qualifications, issue certificates and relocate learners at the end as needed

Well, this is our blog guide to apprenticeships and I hope that it has been useful in describing the uses for Apprenticeships for your business. Finally I would like to mention that there is currently a financial incentive to Employers to cover a large portion of the £2.60 per hour wage bill incurred - a sum of some £1500 per apprentice taken on by you - maximum 3 per employer.

We hope that you will consider apprenticeships for your organisation. If you still have lots of questions you can contact Paul directly on 077654 08 523 to discuss further or arrange a meeting.

Many thanks for reading - we will try and update as often as we can and hope that you will keep reading.

Well, our first birthday has come and gone.  We had a great time – a visit from the Lord Mayor of Canterbury, a lovely feature in April’s Canterbury Index, a picture in the Whitstable Gazette, “mentions” elsewhere and many good wishes from our social networking friends, suppliers and fellow independent businesses. We’re grateful to all of them.

To mark the occasion, we launched our new home-made pink lemonade at a “1st birthday” price of £1.   It was an instant hit and will join apple mojitos as a “special” for the summer.  Meanwhile, our hot, spiced apple may have to stay on the Specials Board for some time yet, judging by the requests to keep it there.

We had a lot of fun with a very special offer of free chocolate to the first ten people to come in on the day and say “Happy Birthday” – with a bonus for people who sang.  Which they did!

Now it’s Easter which means that “Supplier of the Month” has to be The Kentish Chocolate Company which good-naturedly moved heaven and earth to bring us chocolate chickens, bunnies and eggs.  Working with this sort of Kent-based start-up, which puts all the value into high-quality products and keeps its packaging costs down, is exactly what we’re about. And it means that customers are amazed by the value-for-money on such great-looking gifts – the packaging may be minimal, but the effect is still chic.

Looking ahead, we’re moving steadily from coffee and hot chocolate into juices and smoothies.  Our next milestone will be our 5,000^th smoothie.  There’ll be a bonus basket of local produce for the person who buys it – and we’ll be doing a public count down when we’re getting near.

And finally, having started with facebook and twitter, and followed on with foursquare, we’ve launched ourselves on pinterest  – early days but it’s certainly easy to use and a nice way of expressing the brand’s “personality”.  We sometimes wonder whether the virtual world will eclipse the physical one day – but then we remember that using fresh produce to create products in front of our customers will mean that we’ll always be very grounded indeed. We'd be interested to hear others' experiences.

www.63harbourstreet.co.uk

www.facebook.com/63harbourstreet

www.twitter.com/63harbourst

http://pinterest.com/63harbourstreet/pins/

https://foursquare.com/v/63-harbour-street--juices-smoothies-coffee--more/4ef9b2c8a17cdc15b3e542f6

Company provides a professional computer repair service to small businesses and home users. The service is designed to be fast and cost effective, helping clients to get back on the road from any computer issues.

for further information please visit: http://dkcomptech.co.uk

or send your enquiry to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Catering4kent will be doing a interview from 1 - 2 pm on Kent business radio Tuesday 15 November 2011.

You can listen live and on-line.

http://www.kentbusinessradio.co.uk/

Yummy Homemade, Healthy and Wholesome dog treats, biscuits and cakes.

Our new website is now up and running and we have had our first order! Hooray!!!!

New items being added all the time, have a look tomorrow as we will have our new Liver Cupcakes with Philadelphia icing for sale. These have proven to be a great hit amongst our doggie testers!!

Been busy today baking Liver Treats and Tizzies Tuna Tasties, my dog has never been so happy!

We would welcome any feedback about our site.

We will be selling our yummy treats at some local Xmas fairs, dates to follow shortly.......

Have a look at www.petzkitchen.co.uk and treat your doggie friend to something a little special!

Get your business noticed. Make connections.