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Why Small Businesses Should Employ Apprentices

In: Business and Management

Submitted By 223344
Words 733
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The use of apprentices is good not only for your businesses but also for the industry as a whole. Entrepreneur Julie White tells her experience of employing them

Times are tough in the construction industry, of that there is no doubt. The chancellor, in his autumn statement, has promised £5bn in infrastructure spending and I only hope that the money does not filter through but comes cascading through the system in order to get our industry moving again. When times are tight, everyone is looking at where they can cut back and save but it would be of huge detriment to our industry if the axe started to fall on apprenticeships.
I am a massive believer in apprentices. Around 45% of my overall workforce has been through, or is currently going through, our apprenticeship scheme. I've even put myself through the scheme because I want to know what the guys go through on a day-to-day basis.
The question is often put to me: why bother? People who ask this will say that apprenticeships are pointless because you end up spending money on training someone up and then they leave when you have invested a great deal of time and money into them.
I have a couple of answers to that. Firstly, if every company takes that attitude where is the new blood going to come from in our industry? Don't get me wrong, I am not on a selfless quest, but I would much rather train an apprentice and lose them to the industry now and again, than to see the construction industry slowly eroded because we never bring on new people.
Slowly, we will just see our skills disappear and will have done nothing to replace them, so it is vital that we bring on our apprentices. Secondly, if you do the right thing by your apprentices, they won't leave you.
Here at D-Drill we train them, we look after them and we show them that there is a career progression here for them if they want it. Many of my managers have

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