At ENL Group, we know that engineering and manufacturing can provide an interesting and highly rewarding career.
But how do we ensure that we are supporting young people into the sector and giving them the training, skills, and knowledge needed to build a long and successful career in the UK manufacturing industry?
Well, one of the key ways we do this as a business is through our apprenticeship programme, which offers structured education and training for young people at the start of their careers.
Over the last 10 years, ENL has been bringing apprentices into our business. These young people benefit from on-the-job training, college day release, and focused personal development through coaching and mentoring. Many of our current staff started their journey with the business as apprentices, using it as a springboard to a successful career in UK engineering.
National Apprenticeships Week
Last month saw the celebration of the 15th annual National Apprenticeships Week in the UK.
National Apprenticeships Week brings together businesses and apprentices across the country to celebrate the positive impact that apprenticeships make on individuals, businesses, and the wider economy.
The theme for this year’s Week was ‘build the future’, highlighting the way that apprenticeships can both help individuals to develop the skills and knowledge required for a rewarding career, and support businesses to develop a talented workforce that has the skills required for future success.
This certainly reflects our experience at ENL Group. Our commitment to apprenticeships has brought countless talented and committed people into our business. Many of those who started with us as an apprentice remain with us today, continuing to use the skills that they developed throughout their apprenticeship.
Building a Skills Pipeline
We have written before about the challenge that the UK’s STEM skills shortage presents to manufacturing businesses like ourselves. It is estimated to cost employers an astonishing £1.5 billion each year in additional training costs, recruitment, temporary staffing, and salary inflation.
Before Brexit, some of the structural gaps in the skills pipeline were papered over by the availability of relatively affordable, flexible, and skilled labour from EU nationals. However, since the UK left the EU, it has meant that we need to focus on developing a native skills base to fill roles previously occupied by EU workers.
This may be challenging, but it is not necessarily a negative thing. Because recruiting overseas was cheap and reliable it sometimes acted as a sticking plaster that prevented firms from investing in developing the UK manufacturing skills base in a sustainable way. It also skewed the cost-benefit analysis when it came to making larger structural changes, like investing in automating processes.
Now that we are outside of the EU, all firms within the UK manufacturing sector need to focus on new solutions that can ensure a pipeline of the skills that we need. We see apprenticeships as being a key way of achieving that.
Benefits to Business
People often ask us why, as a business, ENL is so committed to supporting pathways for apprentices?
The main reason is that our experiences with apprentices within the business have been so overwhelmingly positive. We have found that hiring an apprentice is a highly effective way to grow talent within our business. This is helping us develop and retain a motivated, skilled, and qualified workforce.
In particular, apprenticeships allow us to be incredibly flexible, adapting training to meet the specific needs of ENL Group, and helping us expand and upskill our workforce.
Government research indicates that we are not alone in seeing the benefits that apprenticeships bring to business. According to the latest survey figures, a massive 86% of employers said apprenticeships helped them develop skills relevant to their organisation. 78% of employers said apprenticeships improved productivity, whilst 74% said they helped them improve the quality of their product or service.
These are impressive results and demonstrate that apprenticeships can be a win-win that benefits both the host business and the individual learner.
Get Involved
In our experience, the apprenticeships route has enormous benefits to businesses like ours, particularly in a sector where we know there are ongoing challenges around skills.
If your own business is thinking of hiring an apprentice, then there are lots of useful resources on the government’s apprenticeships portal. This will guide you through both the process of recruiting and supporting an apprentice, clarify the responsibilities you will have as an employer, and set out the training and financial support that is available for firms employing apprentices. You will also find lots of great, inspirational examples of the difference that apprenticeships are making both to the lives of young people, and to UK business as a whole.
About ENL Group
ENL Group is based in Portsmouth, UK and Veľké Kostoľany, Slovakia. Established in 1958, we have been servicing UK-based and European companies for decades. Working with a secure supply chain, ENL provides quality components for quality-driven customers – with full certification for all of our products and quality checking at every stage.
Operating 24/7, we design, manufacture and deliver critical components for our customers across the UK and Europe.
Contact Us for more information about ENL and how we can help your business.
