Our visit to Webs Furniture Training

In order to better understand the training and development needs of our apprentice client, Webs furniture training, apprentice trainers Ian Jewel, Tom Parrick and Jen Steventon headed to their base in Nottingham, to gain an insight into the roles and responsibilities that their apprentices have. 

The visit included a tour of the apprentices' working environment, as well as chatting to some of the guys on full time apprenticeships in the wood machining and kitchen fitting departments, to ascertain the processes they go through and the challenges they face in the work environment on a daily basis. This is hugely valuable for both us as trainers as well as the apprentices in that gaining an understanding of the specific processes involved at Webs allows us to draw parallels between their work environment and their course with The Outward Bound Trust, ultimately making the post-course learning and skills transfer into the workplace so much more effective and long-lasting.

The outcome of our day's visit was that key themes and approaches within Webs training were identified, and these will be integral to the Webs-specific Outward Bound course.  

We'd like to thank Webs Furniture Training for their time.

Apprentice Training & Development Day – a visit to the Ricoh plant

As part of National Apprentice Week, myself and another apprentice trainer from The Trust’s Aberdovey centre, Alex Bridge, travelled to Telford, Shropshire, to visit Ricoh, one of The Trust’s long-standing apprentice clients. 
Ricoh is a global leader in IT and office automation solutions.  Their reputation for providing businesses of every type with total printing solutions is well established.  At the Telford plant, the key aspects of Ricoh’s work is the manufacture of high quality toner, the assembly of copiers for distribution, re-conditioning used copiers and re-filling used toner cartridges (as part of their sustainable business development) and design and development of business solutions.  The plant employs over 800 people and aims to maintain a roster of 18 apprentices.  These are in three branches of the business.  Commercial apprentices are involved in office-based areas of the business such as Human Resources and Accounts.  Craft apprentices are very much hands-on, maintaining and repairing equipment.  Technical Apprentices are focussed on design and development.
Having worked with the Ricoh apprentices last September, this visit was a fantastic opportunity to see the apprentices in their own work place, and to gain a working knowledge of both their day-to-day environment (including systems and equipment they use, responsibilities, examples of the types of jobs the apprentices can expect to be tasked with) and the business of Ricoh on a larger scale.  This was a key part of the day as it highlighted Ricoh as a modern and progressive employer, very much motivated by the development of all aspects of its business, but especially its employees.  Ricoh apprentices are central to this ethos.

In terms of where this helps The Outward Bound Trust develop its apprentice development courses, for me (Stewart) there are two main areas this visit highlighted:

1. work-place terms that we can build into our programmes at Outward Bound, to make the apprenticeship courses very specific to each client, and to aid a smoother and more efficient transition from Outward Bound back to the apprentices’ work-place;
2. the visit served to reinforce the differences between apprentice work and the other client types that The Trust works with, such as primary and secondary school education.  Walking into the reception at Ricoh, the fact that we are dealing with young adults in a corporate setting was immediately apparent, and we very much approach all of our Apprentice Development courses as such.

All the development that has occurred within the apprentice programmes at The Trust over the last year has meant that we can meet and exceed the needs of clients such as Ricoh.  The Ricoh visit served to reinforce the initiative that The Trust has taken in fine-tuning its Apprentice Development offering in line with each client’s unique business requirements. We would like to thank Ricoh for taking the time to work with us on our visit.

Stewart Glendinning and Alex Bridge, Senior Instructors,
The Outward Bound Trust, Aberdovey Centre

< previous posts                                                                                              recent posts >

Archives

Recent posts