Giving skills and experience to young people in the local community has always been at the heart of our business – more than 50% of our entire workforce have completed apprenticeships over the past 40 years.
The foundations for working in this way were laid by our founder Spencer Davies OBE, who has always believed passionately in supporting young people. During the 1990s he became an active participant in the Government’s New Deal for Communities programme in Wales. This was a regeneration programme that focused on building skills, pride and opportunity across local neighbourhoods. Spencer’s involvement in this programme cemented Amcanu’s commitment to the community, which still stands firm today.
Training young people at the start of their careers allows us to identify those who will become an integral part of the Amcanu team as we continue to grow.
Working closely with Coleg Sir Gâr – we offer youngsters a supported transition from education into work, this helps to ease them into the culture of work and increases their employability.
The formality and structure of the programme helps to accelerate learning by combining practical work experience with classroom theory. For the apprentices, these two different ways of learning help to imbed new skills more quickly and make sure that they are not easily forgotten. Working in this way also benefits the business by enabling us to keep up with current standards and text-book theory.
We like working with apprentices because they bring enthusiasm, new ideas and perspectives which stop us getting stuck in our ways. The moment we try to teach somebody else, we have the opportunity to challenge ourselves by asking if our time-served ways are still the best.
Our most established team members get a great a sense of satisfaction from passing their skills on. Martyn, our Operations Director, encourages the exchange of knowledge between the new and more experienced members of staff, “When you go from working on the shop floor to the office, you learn a different kind of job satisfaction. As a tool-maker I took pride in what I made, now I feel pride in seeing others make things.”
We take the education and training of young people in our region very seriously. As Spencer identified back in the 1990s, this is fundamental – not only to our success, but to the continued success and development of manufacturing in Wales.
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info@amcanu.co.uk