30 Dec 2020
Clarkson Evans Response
5yThank you for your review and we’re sorry to hear how you feel about your experience of working with us as an apprentice.
We undertake in-depth selection when deciding who to hire for one of our highly sought-after apprenticeship places but we recognise that we should aim to continually improve our recruitment process. One of our priorities is to make sure there can be no confusion about the kind of work involved in our apprenticeships or about the mindset required to make a success of the opportunity. We specialise in wiring new homes and therefore the work our apprentices do will always be of this nature. We also recruit apprentices with a view to offering a long-term career path with the company, which is what many have progressed to achieve, so therefore it’s important to understand that the work will continue to be on new housing developments for the long term. For those who wish to stay ‘on the tools’ with us, earnings potential is higher than could be found in most types of electrical work, with many of our qualified team leaders regularly earning in excess of £1,500 a week! And that’s ‘on-the-books’ with everything supplied and paid holidays. There are also opportunities to progress into management and over 70% of our managers in technical positions first joined us as apprentices.
High earnings potential starts as an apprentice, and our productivity bonus scheme means that average pay for first year apprentices currently stands at £343 per week, rising to £433 per week after the first year. Apprentices working in our most productive teams can earn much more, with some of the more experienced apprentices earning over £600 a week whilst not yet even qualified. Although there can occasionally be long days at busy times of year, on average our apprentices work 43 hours a week. To be clear, our apprenticeships are best suited to people who are focused on maximising their earnings and will therefore be flexible and work hard to do so. However, this does not mean that shortcuts can be taken in terms of quality. It’s only by achieving quality workmanship over the last 40 years that we’ve been able to build long-term relationships with our customers (the UK’s leading house builders).
Women remain very much underrepresented across the whole construction industry but we are pleased to have had increasing numbers of women apply to us and join our apprenticeship programme in the last few years. This is a significant step forward and we hope that having more successful female role models to follow will encourage more women to apply to us every year. In terms of toilet facilities, we have separate female toilets at many of our branches, or private unisex toilets (as may be found in many modern restaurants or public buildings).
We have indeed taken the decision to disband the team who were previously dedicated to apprenticeship support, and this was after taking the view that our managers at each branch are the people best placed to support the apprentices who work in their teams, rather than having a separate team of people doing this from head office.
Once again, we are sorry to hear that an apprenticeship with us doesn’t seem to have been the right option to suit your career aspirations and wish you well in the future.