Vital Technology Group, the Wetherby-based provider of business IT services, has announced plans for a significant investment in its award-winning apprenticeship scheme which will see the development of an in-house training programme.
The move will also see the recruitment of up to 25 apprentices over the next three years to help with its growth plans.
The business currently trains between one and two apprentices per year in partnership with local training providers following a standard programme combining recognised and highly-valued professional training and qualifications with on the job experience.
Over the past few years, Vital has twice been Apprentice Employer of the Year, and sees a successful training initiative as key to its continued success and future growth.
The new apprenticeship programme will be designed in-house by Vital’s founding managing director, Lee Evans, and experienced apprenticeship graduates.
The new scheme will be designed to deliver even more value to the business and its future cohorts of apprentices through a broader and more advanced range of professional training, and a more rigorous and structured programme of internal training.
Lee Evans, managing director of Vital Technology Group said:
Our apprenticeship programme has been a cornerstone of our success to date, and many of our most experienced and successful employees are graduates of it and have gone on to forge long and rewarding careers with the company.
As we gear up for our continued growth we are continually looking at how to develop and grow our workforce; recruiting staff that fit into the Vital culture and have the broad range of skills and experience required to work in an outsource environment is a real challenge and potential obstacle to maintaining our expansion.
We are very excited to develop our own, in-house apprenticeship programme and we are putting this at the forefront of our future growth plans.
We have seen a gradual decline in the quality of ‘off the shelf’ apprenticeship programmes because of training providers jumping on the apprenticeship bandwagon, quite often delivering the minimum possible standard and quantity at the lowest cost to maximise their own profits from the available funding.
By designing our own scheme and bringing this in-house, we will be able to ensure that our apprentices receive the best possible combination of professional training and certifications and in-depth, structured internal teaching.
Our vision is to deliver the most comprehensive IT technician apprenticeship programme anywhere in the UK; delivering a steady stream of enthusiastic and high calibre IT professionals into our business as we continue to grow over the coming years.
Vital was established in 2006 and founded its apprenticeship programme two years later having found it difficult to recruit employees with the necessary IT qualifications.
At present, Vital is in the running for the Employer of the Year accolade at this year’s National Apprenticeship Awards.
In 2014 and 2011 it won the Small Business Apprentice of the Year Award for Yorkshire and the Humber Region, and which saw the company being named a UK top 100 Apprentice Employer by the National Apprenticeship Service and City & Guilds.
The company is currently the FSB & Worldpay UK Business Awards’ Employer of the Year for the Yorkshire and North East region.
