Bagnalls Named in Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers
02 August 2022
We’re thrilled to announce that we were recently named one of the Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers in England by the Department of Education!
We have a long-standing heritage of apprenticeship development, which is an integral part of the value we place on people development and providing all our staff with opportunities for professional growth. 29 of our current management team started their careers as apprentices, whilst two members of our Board of Directors, Lee Jeyes and Richard Britten, also started as apprentice painters with the business.
Even our founder Alfred Bagnall himself was apprentice-trained in his first job in the trade painting railway carriages at the Saltley Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, and our company has employed apprentices as early as 1899 when an apprenticeship in painting and decorating took seven years to complete.
We’ve continued to promote the importance of apprenticeships in the years since, with 24 apprentices joining us in 2021/22 so far across business sectors including Painting & Decorating, Site Management, and Accountancy. In total, 7.4% of our overall workforce was undertaking apprenticeships in March 2022 when the data for the Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers list was gathered.
We were delighted to be named 78th in the Top 100 Apprentice Employers list, a category open to organisations with 250 employees or more and employing a minimum of 25 apprentices in England. With over 500 entries for the awards, including many prestigious organisations such as BT, the British Army, and Network Rail, achieving a spot in the top 100 places is no mean feat and speaks to the superb efforts of our teams around the country when it comes to providing our apprentices with the best prospects possible for a long and successful career with the business.
Our HR Director Ellie Jobes commented: “I am delighted that Bagnalls has been awarded a place in the Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers for 2022, especially as there were so many entrants for a place. I believe our success is down to our commitment to apprenticeships at senior management level, the continued support for our apprenticeship programmes by branch colleagues at both management and site levels, as well as the support given by local colleges who provide additional skills training for all our apprentices.
“Traditionally, our apprentices have been trained in painting and decorating, gaining skills on customer sites, at college and the company’s bespoke Training Academy in Doncaster. However, in recent years we have embraced the variety of apprenticeships available for all staff to uphold our value of people development.”