News

Celebrating the Success of Apprenticeships: From Apprentice to Manager

It’s our very own Dom Bridges’ 5^th anniversary at MVIS this week. He started his career as an apprentice in 2013 and has quickly worked his way to a managerial position. Here we celebrate the positive impact that apprenticeships have for businesses.

Dom Bridge, our Assistant Operations Manager, started with us five years ago as an Admin Apprentice, before moving on to Operations and Customer Service Supervisor. Throughout his roles, he’s proven himself as a team player, bringing new ideas to the company and has grown to be an integral part of the MVIS team.

Since his first day, Dom got ‘stuck in’ right away. Incredibly organised and proactive, he uses his logistics skills to help plan for new projects and ensure we have the resources ready to deploy. Dom always says that no job it too big or too small.

Here at MVIS, we’ve found that hiring apprentices helps to engage staff and leads to a high level of staff retention, with all of our previous apprentices gaining permanent roles and staying with us as they ‘move through the ranks’. Current employees have the opportunity to develop their management skills through training and mentoring our apprentices, while the apprentices themselves gain a wealth of new skills and develop their confidence. Of our current 17 employees, seven are (or have been) apprentices.

Dedicated to helping students access the best opportunities, our General Manager, Anne Ashman, works closely with local schools and Sixth Forms, advising staff and students about work placements and apprenticeships. Using her industry networks, she is currently in the process of working with the head of a local Sixth Form to develop degree level apprenticeships in engineering, in partnership with high profile companies, as an alternative to traditional Higher Education.

Longstanding champions of the importance of apprentices, MVIS have since taken on and retained six more apprentices:

Rebecca (since March 2015)
George (since March 2015)
Tillie (since September 2016)
Kiran (since October 2016)
Tom (since February 2017)
Cain (since August 2017)

Anne says, “I believe it’s incredibly important for young people to be given enough information to choose the right career or education pathway, and for businesses like ours to support them in reaching their goals. For any companies out there thinking of hiring an apprentice, my advice is to go for it. Young people have so much to give, their enthusiasm and willingness to bring new ideas to the business is a real benefit.”