Approximately 80 per cent of British Gas Services’ senior managers started as apprentices. This statistic outlines the fundamental importance of Apprenticeships to British Gas’ core business.
Lisa Robbins, Head of The Academy at British Gas says: “We believe that apprenticeships are a successful way of developing and retaining effective employees. The programmes ensure that apprentices feel an important part of British Gas quickly through living the vision and values.
British Gas maintains a simple ethos - through meeting the needs of its learners, it is able to ensure that excellent customer service, key to maintaining and expanding its business, is delivered to all its customers. It is essential that British Gas maintains the competence and skills of around 8,000 engineers in order to serve its customers’ ever growing needs. Growth plans mean there is a need to recruit around 600 engineers each year, of which almost two thirds are delivered through the Apprenticeship programme.
Lisa Robbins goes on to say: “Apprenticeships bring integrity to our business.. It enables us to develop our engineers to set the highest possible standard of care and excellence for all our customers.
At British Gas Services, we have five core behaviours which we build into everything we do:
- We are stronger together
- We keep our promises
- We wear our customer’s shoes
- We take pride in what we do
- We put safety first
“These core behaviours are fundamental and we use them as the key-stone for a British Gas Apprenticeship. One of the ways we instil these beliefs is by enrolling all our apprentices on the prestigious Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award. Initiatives like this help explain why retention rates for British Gas Apprenticeships are so high. 92 per cent of our apprentices recruited in the past five years are still with the company.”
British Gas runs an established and dedicated recruitment and diversity team to ensure improvement in the trends of apprentices joining British Gas from under represented groups in the community.
To enable British Gas to meet our current and future training needs, the British Gas Engineering Academy has six state of the art Academies, strategically located around the country. These superb technical facilities are purpose designed to allow for industry leading technical and vocational training. To fully prepare our learners for their roles, the British Gas Engineering Academies are set up to recreate a realistic working environment. All six of the Academies have recently been accredited with The National Sills Academy for Power, recognising the innovation in delivering training solutions for Smart Metering.
The newest of these British Gas facilities is located in Tredegar, South Wales. Working with Welsh Government, the centre was opened by the First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, in May 2010. The centre has a focus on “green skills”, energy efficiency & renewable technology. This flagship centre firmly underpins the British Gas position as Energy Experts at the heart of Britain’s homes and businesses.