May 14, 2014 |
Oldbury-based cold-roll forming specialist Metsec was awarded the title Apprentice Employer of the Year at the Express & Star Business Awards 2014 that took place at Wolverhampton Racecourse last night.
Sponsored by Wolverhampton City Council, the award will strengthen Metsec’s reputation as one of the top employers for young people in the region. Metsec Environmental Safety & Training Manager Steve Giles is thrilled about the award and positive that the accolade will help to attract further engineering offspring:
“Metsec remains one of the few engineering companies to run an in-house apprenticeship scheme without any external support. Therefore we are very proud of the award and even prouder that the wider business and civic community are supportive of our programme. As a firm we have spent a lot of time getting the apprenticeship process right and making sure we cast our net far and wide to find the right people. Winning this award is the icing on the cake for a lot of hard work.”
“Not least we hope that the word will spread and more young people will consider starting a career in engineering. To date we have trained 43 apprentices that now make up 13% of our workforce and what’s more, we are expecting to achieve our goal of 20% by 2020. It is great to see that our apprentices strongly value the opportunity to learn while they earn – both financially and in terms of qualifications.”
The cold-roll formed steel manufacturer is currently recruiting six new apprentices for its in-house scheme, who will complete their ‘Performing Engineering Operations’ Certificate at NVQ Level 2 together with a Level 2 Technical Certificate as well as develop their functional skills in Maths, Communication and ICT over the course of a year. On successful completion of the first year, apprentices will move onto an Advanced Apprenticeship to obtain an NVQ Level 3 and an additional Level 3 Technical Certificate.
For more information on the Express & Star Business Awards 2014 and this year’s category winners, go to www.expressandstar.com/news/2014/05/16/night-of-celebration-for-cream-of-west-midlands-business/.
