How working with universities helps solve our workforce challenges

By? Mark Sheerin , Senior Early Careers Business Partner at Leonardo UK

It creates an ever-growing talent pipeline?

We're growing at a fast rate, with over 8000 employees in the UK, including 134 apprentices starting this year to complement our 388 apprentices within the business. Our apprenticeship scheme is highly regarded and this together with our graduate and industrial placement programmes puts us in a strong position to fill our talent pipeline.???

Many individuals who have joined our company through our apprenticeship programme have found long-term success.? For example, Clive Higgins, Chair and CEO of Leonardo UK, joined Leonardo in 1994 through the Yeovil apprenticeship programme. Clive is very passionate about the principles of apprenticeships and the long-term development of skills across the business from a grassroots level. The fact that he’s now at the pinnacle of our company is proof that we offer genuine career traction.?

98% of our apprentices will complete their apprenticeship programme and over 90% of those who join Leonardo UK as an apprentice stay with the company.??

Filling skills gaps?

We are passionate about giving our apprentices the opportunity to learn from our experienced engineers, so they can inspire them by transferring not only their skills but their decades of business experience. Working with the University of Hertfordshire to develop our apprentices’ skills is key to that success.??

As our apprenticeship numbers continue to grow, we expect the programmes to backfill the gaps we have across the total business, in areas like engineering, project management, HR and IT. Our collaboration also helps us to upskill current employees who joined the business in one discipline but are looking to migrate to another.?

Help us solve future challenges?

We want to ensure our apprentices have the freedom and encouragement to bring their innovative ideas to the table, so they can?be rolled into everyday business practices. As an example, we know that sustainability is becoming an increasingly important theme in our daily lives, both from a personal and corporate perspective. There's a natural enthusiasm in our apprentice population for all things to do with sustainability, and they're often coming forward with suggestions and ideas.??

A team of our Edinburgh apprentices recently wanted to analyse whether there was anything we could do to reduce our carbon footprint. They identified an opportunity to monitor energy wastage in our labs, then implemented a process to highlight when equipment was not in use to establish behaviour changes to turn unused equipment off. The process eventually reduced energy wastage by 53% in the lab, and the team’s resulting improvements are being rolled out across the business.?

We work with universities to identify and eliminate pain points??

There is a real benefit to being able to collaborate and partner with a university and offer our voice in creating and shaping apprenticeship programmes. It enables us to identify and eliminate pain points across our workforce.??

We recently had an engineering-based qualification that we had delivered for years, as the business had evolved in technology over time so it no longer was fit for purpose. It turned out that it needed to be more science-based. Bringing a provider in to support us by having a look at what we were doing, then returning with a solution helped us to fill that gap so it now meets our business requirements.???

University support is very much key to the success of the apprenticeship programmes as we continue to grow the numbers in the coming years.?

Apprentices are ambassadors for our company?

The impact our apprentices have out in the community is very powerful. Because they're close in age to the school students they go out and visit, there’s a deep underlying sense of trust that when they ask a question about apprenticeships – they know they’ll hear the truth about them from their first-hand experience. We often put apprentices into high profile situations, such as speaking at huge formal events with senior people around them and they do brilliantly. There’s no better ambassador for our company's apprenticeship programme than the apprentices themselves.?

? Leonardo is one of the UK’s leading aerospace companies and one of the biggest suppliers of defence and security equipment to the UK MOD. Leonardo partnered with the University of Hertfordshire in 2019, and is currently running our Senior Leader, Chartered Manager, Digital Technology Solutions Professional, Electronic/Electrical and Mechanical Engineering apprenticeship programmes.?