For over 40 years Norbar, a founder company of the Engineering Trust has taken 2 apprentices each year for a 4-year apprenticeship.
Recruited, inducted and managed by me for the first 2 years, they then transfer to the end line manager for the job role they go into.
Year 1 is full time at college, typically 4 days per week undertaking an advanced manufacturing course and 1 day doing more of a Development Learning qualification.
The 2nd year is day release and simultaneously they follow a bespoke internal training plan. This takes them round the company in a logical order gaining a better understanding of the business. Follow up meetings are held after every placement by the Manager of the area and independently myself. The purpose is to discuss what went well, and in line with Continuous Improvement what could be done differently.
Over 10% of Norbar employees are ex or current apprentices.
Many of these have taken advanced qualifications and some are now people managers in their own right.
We use our annual careers open evening to promote engineering and we also work with local schools to introduce young people into what engineering is. We have recognised that introducing engineering at an early age is key.
Each year we enter the Engineering Trust annual awards, which promotes successes of apprentices and the support we give. The number of awards we have won over the years is indicative that we do things well and go above and beyond.
In February we attended the awards evening in Oxford as we had been nominated for an amazing 4 awards.
I was nominated for the 2nd time for Above and Beyond. Whilst this is a personal honour, this is about everyone at Norbar. Over the years, we have provided support in wellbeing and medical issues resulting in rewriting training plans, transition issues from being at school to employee, learning support and dealing with parental intervention!
We had 2 nominations for Apprentice of the year where the individual needs to demonstrate exceptional learning, input, dedication and achievements.
After a very close contest, Jasmine Piper won this award beating 9 other contenders. Danny Boulton was highly commended.
To our absolute delight though, we won the Employer Award, probably the most prestigious of them all.
It demonstrates that Norbar do things well as demonstrated by our successes. Even the Engineering Trust have said we have the best apprenticeship programme and support network of all the companies they deal with.
We have an amazing record – well done and thank you everyone.
Wanda Stewart-Lee.
Head of Human Resources.