As well as speaking to some of our apprentices (check out our social media pages!), we wanted to mark National Apprenticeship Week by looking at how our programme has progressed since last year.
DHU has a valued and embedded apprenticeship programme that enables individuals to grow with us by learning on the job straight from school or in a new trade, or through an apprenticeship whereby a current colleague can learn or develop a new skill to progress their career.
DHU has six apprentices with a further 18 employees currently undertaking an apprenticeship. These include within Senior Leadership, Learning & Development, Business Admin, Communications, Payroll Assistant Manager, Property Maintenance, People & Culture, Finance, Procurement as well as within Registered Nurse and Assistant Practitioner roles. A new apprenticeship for ‘In House Recruiter’ has been developed and relevant members of our Talent Acquisition Team will be starting this during this year.
The programme has been hugely successful with a number of apprentices securing permanent positions, largely in corporate areas, learning about our values and what we stand for from their first moment of employment. We are always looking at ways that we can develop our apprenticeship procedure to offer apprenticeships for different roles in different disciplines.
“A good way for people to learn…”
April Francis is DHU’s Organisational Development Specialist for Corporate Services, she told us: “We have a very good track record of taking our apprentices full time after they’ve completed their apprenticeship. As a way of developing a person in a particular role it works very well, it’s such a good way for people to learn about us as an organisation. For many it will be their first taste of what it’s like to have a profession, be in a professional environment outside of school or university with different responsibilities. For us, our commitment is to make it work and develop the talent and experiences they have, learning from them as much as they learn from us.
“One role we’ve recently introduced is a Student Nurse Apprenticeship, two of our colleagues are the first in DHU to take on the new role, which will be hugely to beneficial to them as individuals and us as an organisation. They are both looking to progress from their HCA roles, having already completed Assistant Practitioner Apprenticeships. Thanks to the Apprenticeship Levy we can support them through it which means in two years, if they successfully complete the course, they will be qualified nurses.
“For us we have retained and built on the experience they already have as DHU colleagues. For them, it is a chance to match their ambition ‘on the job’. It is a commitment on both sides, a mutual one that will strengthen our clinical teams and their skillset. As an organisation we benefit from emerging talent and a fresh approach.
“A commitment from us…”
“It’s a financial commitment from our side as well so we work closely with Finance and Payroll, and we’re always open to hearing ideas from those who have an apprenticeship they’d like to explore. We also work very closely with regional, partner organisations such as the University of Derby, Babingtons and EMA Training in Derby, recruiting directly from our website.
“To be able to celebrate and showcase some of the apprentices we have currently, and those who have stayed with us, shows how seriously we take these opportunities and the value we place on doing our very best to make it work.”