“APPRENTICESHIPS: THEY ARE NOT AS OLD FASHIONED AS YOU THINK”
Glendale Managed Services is the ‘green services’ division of Parkwood Holdings Plc, which operates throughout the UK. Glendale’s activities include grounds management, landscaping and countryside activities including forestry, arboriculture, horticulture and green waste recycling.
Glendale currently has 46 apprentices working throughout the company and has a target that in 2011 the company will have over 50 apprentices working in all aspects of the company.
Glendale is the largest specialist green service provider in the UK with maintenance contracts spanning the whole of the country.
Whilst other companies within the industry may take the view that apprenticeships are old fashioned and concentrate on developing skills ‘in house’ Glendale takes a different view. Apprenticeships ensure that Glendale have a steady flow of practical employees with the skills and qualifications now required to undertake basic arboricultural tasks.
Basic skills issues have long been a concern for Arboricultural Companies, with the ever-increasing costs of training and assessments.
Glendale Regional Arboricultural Manager for London and the South East Ian Haynes said “Developing our own skilled employees has been important to our company. It means creating opportunities in the green services sector”
“I always thought that hiring an apprentice was very old fashioned and would prefer to employ the right minded young person and train them up over a few years, but the apprenticeship programmes we have worked with for example at Capel Manor College have been very well planned and their apprenticeship programmes have been put together by professionals for the professional industry”
Each Glendale Apprentice is given a dedicated coordinator/mentor to work with on a daily basis, many of whom are long term members of staff and in some cases are former apprentice themselves.
The candidates get on the job, practical experience that is tailored to the individual and Glendale’s working style, teamed with the technical knowledge apprentices acquire from the educational provider. Training Arborists in this way means that Arborists joining the industry have the knowledge and skill base they need to provide quality tree care.
More than 70 per cent of the apprentices find a permanent job within Glendale, over the years a number of them have risen throughout the company structure.
Apprenticeships are pioneering and are shifting with the times, as well as being established and proven to work; they are an outstanding way of recruiting new and motivated young staff into an ever-increasing, highly experienced industry.
By Ian Haynes -
Regional Arboricultural Manager– London & South East.
Glendale Managed Services.
