Sterling – Building the Future

National Apprenticeship Week 2022 has been focused around the theme, ‘Build the Future’, which aims to focus on the benefits apprenticeships can have on individuals, businesses, and local communities.

In celebration of National Apprenticeship Week 2022, James Rogers, Executive Vice President and Site Lead at our Dudley facility (pictured), discusses the impact of apprentices on our future.

Investing in our people for the long term

At Sterling, we are dedicated to developing our workforce to ensure they have the skills necessary to perform their jobs and succeed in developing their careers.

Sharing knowledge within our business is the key to our success, and as our long serving employees retire, these employees’ mentor our apprentices to allow the transfer of knowledge. Our mentoring programme helps to train the apprentices, so they are ready to grow as the business grows.

Service excellence – our culture and values

Our mission is to deliver an exceptional experience to our customers and employees, so developing our workforce for the long-term means they are used to behaving and making decisions in line with our values.

These four values are at the core of everything we do and reinforce our family orientated culture: Be willing, Be transparent, Be reliable, Be caring.

Supporting growth

Currently at our Dudley facility we are training 36 apprentices across various departments, with 10 due to complete their end point assessments in the next few months. In the last three years, our Dudley facility has seen a total of 65 learners join its apprenticeship scheme. With 64 out of the 65 apprentices at Dudley still employed, we continue to maintain the site’s excellent retention rate, which we are particularly proud of.

Safeguarding our future

Investing in our apprentices, who will become the future leaders of our business, is key to developing diversity, futureproofing our business and ensuring our ongoing success. We achieve this through tailoring our apprenticeship programme and the opportunities we offer, to support our business growth and needs.

Supporting our local community

Sterling is also a big supporter of the local community, offering support to schools, colleges and universities.  Our apprenticeship scheme is just one part of us offering entry level jobs to people in the communities we operate.

Reflecting on my career, one of the most important things that I did to support my progression was to move into a different role or take an opportunity outside of my comfort zone, and so my advice to all apprentices out there would be to seize every opportunity with enthusiasm. I also think it’s important to highlight that our apprenticeship programme isn’t just for those whose are leaving school and taking the first step in their career. We take on apprentices who are at various stages in their career and encourage anyone looking for a new challenge to also consider an apprenticeship.

I’d like to take this opportunity, in the midst of National Apprenticeship Week 2022, to thank every one of our apprentices for their hard work and dedication. We look forward to seeing everything you achieve as you complete your apprenticeships and beyond and are excited to welcome our next cohort of apprentices later in 2022.

Applications for our 2022 intake of apprentices are due to open in Spring 2022. Make sure you follow us on social media to keep up to date with the latest news.