ESSENTIAL CEDIA

WORKING WITH APPRENTICES

Chhaya Landschultz, of CEDIA member, IndigoZest relates the company’s experience of working with apprentices.

Recruiting new talent into an integration business is always a challenge. Especially since, until recently, there has been no formal pathway from higher education into our industry.

That’s changed now with CEDIA, in partnership with Skills4Stem, providing support for the Smart Home Technician apprenticeship. We’re taking advantage of this scheme and would urge other integrators to take a serious look at it too.

Our interest in taking on apprentices coincided with the Government’s Kickstart scheme, which offers incentives to employers to help young people at risk of long-term unemployment.

So far, we have taken on two apprentices aged 18 and 19. Our first apprentice joined through the Kickstart programme. He had an NVQ Level 2 & 3 Electrical Installation and, once he started, we quickly recognised his potential and moved him onto the Smart Home Technician apprenticeship. Our second apprentice also had an NVQ in Level 2 Electrical Installation – Buildings and Structures but had been working for a security company and understood CCTV installation. He too is thriving with the Smart Home Technician apprenticeship.

In terms of the course itself, Skills4Stem have worked with CEDIA to create the programme and, as such, it is closely aligned with CEDIA’s own education programme. It also means that the apprentices can go on and sit the CEDIA CIT and IST exams in the future. We follow the course structure to make sure that the apprentices undertake all the requirements over the year in order to complete the course. At the end of the programme, an assessment is carried out by an independent organisation and our apprentices will walk away with a nationally recognised Level 3 qualification.

The Smart Home Technician apprenticeship is open to anyone in England who is over the GCSE age with no age limit - just so long as they are a paid employee. It runs for around 18-months and can be started at any point in the year. It includes a mixture of taught knowledge, practical skills, and on-site training.

We conduct weekly meetings with each apprentice to make sure they’re on track, and when we are planning projects, we look at the senior integrator involved and allocate one of the apprentices to them for mentoring. That way we know the apprentices always have the time and knowledge of an experienced member of the team.

Our two apprentices, Ishmael and Dan, are loving the scheme. We’re making sure they are getting the right experience on-site and giving them varied assignments to grow their skills as quickly as possible. Both apprentices are extremely diligent and have the right attitude towards everything they do.

We would 100% recommend the apprenticeship scheme to any integrator looking to expand their workforce. However, we would caveat that with ensuring that your business is in the right place to make it work. When we first embarked on our apprenticeship journey, we made sure we were in a position as a company, in terms of experience, time and resource, to train new people and give them what they need to complete the course.

The apprenticeship scheme has proved to be a brilliant opportunity. For us, it’s great to be able to give back but it also works for us financially. Ordinarily, senior members of the team would have to do the basic tasks along with everything else, now, the apprentices are there to help and take on those tasks. They are learning but we are not wasting the time of our senior integrators. It frees them up for other responsibilities.

This industry is limited in terms of the availability of the right skilled people and the apprenticeship scheme can change that. It offers a brilliant career path for those who want to be hands-on. We support it and recommend that others should too.

Contact CEDIA or Skills4Stem for more information.

The company has taken on two apprentices, Ishmael Ramnarine (pictured) and Dan Lawson CEDIA cedia.net https://skills4stem.com