Apprenticeship programme wins national award

Guy’s and St Thomas’ won a bronze award in the Apprenticeship of the Year category of this year’s Learning Awards on Thursday 5 February.

These prestigious awards are the learning and development sector’s annual celebration of outstanding achievement, best practice and excellence.

The bronze award was for the apprenticeship programme run by Essentia, which is a directorate of Guy’s and St Thomas’ whose staff provide capital, estates and facilities, IT and many other non-clinical services in the Trust.

The Essentia team was pitted against many large global organisations which entered this year’s Learning Awards and so just to be shortlisted was a significant achievement.

Essentia set up its apprenticeship programme in 2012 – it includes:

• a ‘Boot Camp’ to ensure apprentices understand the commitment involved in the programme
• mentoring and buddying for every apprentice
• making the apprenticeships as interesting as possible – for example, Essentia apprentices have worked on a number of key projects together including running careers fairs in local schools.

Key to the success of the Essentia apprenticeship programme has been apprentices moving into permanent employment – 12 out of 13 apprentices in the second year of the programme secured full-time jobs.

This year the scheme has expanded to include 25 apprentices working in areas as diverse as transport, business administration, project management, IT, and painting and decorating.

Karen Adewoyin, Essentia’s Head of Workforce, says: “I am delighted we have won this award because it demonstrates the commitment, dedication and hard work that the Essentia team, particularly Sue Fisher, has put in to develop apprenticeships.

“These schemes have offered some fantastic opportunities to young people and it has been great to see so many success stories of apprentices who have started their careers with us and brought so much to the roles and departments they work in.”