From: Dean Hodges,
Managing Director, BM Aluminium

Not before time perhaps, the wider industry seems to have woken up to the realities of the skills shortage and the need to train the next generation of employees.

We all know the main reasons of course – from uncertainty around Brexit to poor perceptions of the industry amongst young people; but I don’t think any of them are insurmountable obstacles.

Certainly, our experience of employing school leavers and investing in training them ourselves has been nothing but positive. We have five support technicians here at BM Aluminium who we have recruited over recent years either direct from school at 18 or from short term, unskilled jobs in their early 20s. They are all now well on the way to establishing successful careers with us and, just as importantly, are doing a brilliant job for customers.

Even though we are a relatively small business, we have shown that it is perfectly possible to create a structured, bespoke training programme which equips young recruits with exactly the skills we need and embeds them firmly within our company culture, without it costing a fortune.

What is worth pointing out though, and what might be interesting to other businesses, is that we have opted not to go down the formal apprenticeship route. For us, the schemes on offer were too generic and just not tailored enough to the skills that we need. More than that though, they were so poorly paid that we felt they were demotivating and potentially unfair to the young people. Surely, there’s no point in training staff if they are going to leave as soon as they become valuable to you, simply because they don’t feel valued themselves?

www.bmaluminium.co.uk