Apprentice hire
After more than thirty years in workforce development, Directions understands that finding and retaining talent is a key issue for organisations of every size and type. The reality and impact of skills and labour shortages is not going away any time soon. Addressing the challenges for organisation to maintain and build skills is what we do.
Apprenticeships are an invaluable tool to build the workforce your business needs. Apprenticeships deliver a structured, employment based program with a combination of on the job and off the job training, usually over a four year period. Directions delivers to you a tried and tested program of support, assistance and advice that makes it simple and streamlined to have apprentices in your workplace, learning their trade alongside learning your business from the inside out. When they’re completed, you have the option to retain a tradesperson who can add value to your business from day one.
It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, chances are there is an apprenticeship to suit. There are over 80 apprenticeship types currently available in Western Australia, all with some flexibility to tailor the training program to align with you particular skills needs.
Successful apprenticeships start with getting it right from the beginning; recruiting apprentices with the right aptitude and a genuine interest in the trade. Given many have limited workplace history and are young, it’s recruitment that requires specialist strategies. Directions has well established systems to screen and select candidates with the right stuff. And if it still doesn’t quite work out for some reason, we can replace them with a more suitable candidate.
Hosts can set their own minimum requirements when taking on an apprentice, which could be a minimum Year of schooling completed or the prior completion of a pre-apprenticeship. We work with our host employers to recruit the candidate that best suits your needs.
You may want to consider a mature aged apprentice. The wages are a bit higher but a mature aged apprentice can bring a range of transferable work and life skills with them that can really add to the value they bring to your business.
Retaining apprentices and ensuring their success is about the partnerships we forge with our hosts. Ensuring their training translates into the workplace and mentoring and supporting them all the way. Our mentoring is delivered by a team with a genuine passion for helping develop great tradespeople and great employees.
Regular monitoring visits and ongoing access and means any issues for apprentices are identified and addressed quickly. Pastoral support of apprentices includes having access to a professional network of support services should they be needed. Our ongoing safety and wellbeing focus contributes to keeping your workplace safer.
Having apprentices in your business also assists with developing supervisory, training, communication, and leadership skills in your existing team too.