VEKA celebrates apprenticeships

VEKA plc, employer of 360 people at its headquarters in Burnley, celebrated National Apprenticeship Week shining a light on the apprentices working within the business.

With six apprenticeships currently running at VEKA in a range of areas from HR to IT to engineering, the company has a strong history of supporting and helping individuals build careers.

The legacy of supporting and building apprentice-led careers began with Dave Jones, managing director until 2020. Now retired, Dave started his career as an apprentice in 1977 working his way up the career ladder completing a BSc degree and NVQ qualification along the way. Dave became VEKA’s own MD in 2008 until his retirement at the end of the last year.

Dave said of undertaking an apprenticeship: ‘Starting work so early gives you a much better grounding and maturity because you are in a work environment. My advice would always be to do an apprenticeship – it’s a great way to learn and gives you the best of both worlds.”

Mark Jones now a Maintenance Manager at VEKA, started his career as an apprentice with the organisation: “Being an apprentice opens up a whole world of opportunities and it’s never too late to start. We hav e individuals joining the team who are semi-skilled and wanted to build on their skills and develop their careers as well as people who are leaving school and wondering how they can enter the world of work.”

Nathan Daulton, an IT apprentice at VEKA said of his own journey: “I didn’t enjoy the classroom experience. Apprenticeships give you a choice, give you indepe ndence. It’s great when I learn something new and building my experience and knowledge to develop my career.”

Gabriella Hammond, head of human resources at VEKA, commented: “Apprenticeships are a key way for us to develop our younger workers not only for our future but for theirs too. It gives a direct route into the work environment but with ongoing learning.  This enables us to build on the skills we need and sets a great foundation for their career. 

"Apprenticeships are about life long learning, the changing structures of apprenticeships mean that now development training can be offered to a much wider range of employees. This enables us to enhance the skills of more and more of our teams.”

To celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, VEKA unveiled seven videos showing the journey of apprentices at the company and they can be seen on VEKA’s YouTube channel YouTube

To find out more about how you could join the VEKA apprenticeship scheme vist veka.co.uk

Last year VEKA invested £106,000 in employee training despite COVID building on its strategic objectives of making VEKA a great place to work developing talent and building employee motivation.