Are you missing a good old trick? 

We are often asked by employers to explain the benefits of taking on an Apprentice. Within this short blog I'll try and offer a flavour of how they work, who benefits and how, and who is an ideal candidate:

There are currently 958,000 unemployed people aged 16 - 24 years old in the UK - so many in fact that the Government has come up with a tidy little acronym (as they often do when a problem is too big to say in real words) called NEET's. This stands for Young people not in Education, Employment, or Training - there I've said it.

Some of these young people don't want any help. They don't want to engage at all and they are unhappy with the endless burdens of youth, good health and excellent prospects. Poor them. No really. They will wake up one morning aged 35 - still living with mum, and realise that life has passed them by - it's the same within every generation there has ever been and there ever will be.

There are however a huge amount of promising, bright, talented young people out there who are itching for an opportunity to work in a particular sector or industry - these are the diamonds that we try and extract.

These bright young things (and importantly their parents) are faced with a massive dilemma. University fees have sprung up with little warning to the tune of £9,000 per year and have you seen the price of fuel, food, and all of the other things you don't get paid for whilst on a college course???

What does an Apprentice cost?

Our FREE recruitment, training and exit process is described in points below - nothing we do costs you a penny. The Apprentice on the other hand will:

·     Work full time 40 hours per week

·     Take a training allowance of £2.60 per hour

·     stay with you for 6 - 8 months (depending on the length of their programme)

·     Either stay with you at the end or take their new experience and skills into the jobs market 100% better off for having ben given the opportunity to work for you.

If its good enough for Rolls Royce:

We meet business owners every day and it's amazing how often these self motivated, sophisticated and highly skilled inividuals (you know who you are) didn't learn their skills at college or University - myself included.

Many entrepreneurs started out by taking the small jobs, learning fast and embracing all of the skills, experiences and opportunities that came their way. For me it was washing dishes and making novelty desserts in a local restaurant whilst I resat my GCSE's.

In other words it was down to an opportunity that we were given at a young age that had us walk or fall into our future lives be that a strategic decision or a happy accident. We just had an enormous amount of energy and drive to see it through as the years went on.

We are all aware of some HUGE companies who embrace Apprenticeships as a major source of finding young talent. I've mentioned Rolls Royce to grab your attention. I attach the following link so that you can see both the amazing work and the amazing results that they are getting from Apprenticeships: http://www.rolls-royce.com/careers/what_can_do/graduates/apprenticeships/index.jsp

What do you get:

If you have ever worked with a recruitment agency (and had a really positive experience) then you are on the right track regarding the process of taking an Apprentice. The only difference is that we WON'T sting you for payment at the end. The recruitment service is entirely FREE.

FREE SERVICE:

1. A face to face meeting to discuss your needs and requirements

2. A comprehensive job specification and personality match

3. Your post advertised on all of the major Apprenticeship jobs boards + circulation to all career services

4. Full, comprehensive Candidate vetting - including candidate interviews (by us)

5. Top 3 - 5 CV's per post sent to your inbox

6. Interviews to suit you and your diary

7. Enrolment onto an Apprenticeship

8. Full Apprenticeship delivery, certification and FREE workshops for your staff (menu on request)100% on your premises

9. Employer support at the end of the programme to employ or exit the learner from your business

10. Full service review at the end of the programme

The training:

In short you can take an apprentice full time for 6 - 8 months for just £2.60 per hour and they will contribute to your business like any new member of staff.

The Apprenticeship training that is on offer is work based, delivered 100% on your premises - no day release, night school, evenings or weekends.

The training is tailored to suit your businesses needs at that time. They are evidence based - not academic but based on the work you set them.

Your Apprentice will need approximately an hour and a half per week to contribute to their qualification plus two to three hours with their assessor per month (one visit a month) to set work, sit exams and translate their work experiences and skills into nationally recognised qualifications worth between 5 GCSE's and 2 A' levels.

Are they for you?

Perhaps your business is hoping to recruit young talent but the cost is putting you off, or you know someone who you would really like to see in an Apprenticeship role. If so we are working with Candidates and employers all the time and we would be delighted to work with you.

Call direct on 077654 08 523 today or visit: http://www.wmctraining.co.uk/contact-us-2/ and register your details and request a call back for a no obligation chat.

Many thanks for reading this blog - I hope that you have found it useful, informative and a call to action for your business. We are delighted to take all enquiries so please get in touch and we'll hope to introduce you to some pretty smart young cookies FREE of charge.

Kindest regards,

Paul Rees

Managing Director

WMC Training

077654 08 523

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

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/

Get your business noticed. Make connections.