As an online training provider, we understand first hand how important it is to produce productive and effective talent at any age.

Apprenticeship programmes, and training of any kind, are so important in supporting the future workforce by giving them structure, work experience and those important skills which can help foster future business leaders and professionals.

By a company taking on an apprentice, it not only boosts their own skills, but also increases confidence levels, nurtures talent that they may even not know they hold, but also helps a business look inwardly on how they work and the skills they also need to refine.

This is why National Apprenticeship Week is so important as it highlights how important it is to focus on learning, be it in house, remote or a mixture of the two – and it can be an incredible positive to any business.

Benefits to the business of working with apprentices mean that you can adapt their training to the needs of your own business, and they are motivated enough to want to pick up and learn new skills – and are able to work with people who are experts in their own field – which is invaluable in skills transference and learning.

At click2 learn, we have had our own digital marketing apprentice, Roguen Walker, for over a year, and he is proving to be invaluable to us.

He is currently taking his final exams with the training provider NowSkills, and he is already implementing them in his day-to-day role within click2 learn.

Roguen hadn’t initially been sure about taking up an apprenticeship, but soon realised it was the best path for him.

He said: “I became an apprentice by chance, I was browsing digital marketing job opportunities when I came across an advert for an apprenticeship from NowSkills. I quickly filled in the pop-up as just a fallback option to give me as many possibilities as I could and thought nothing more of it. I remember getting a response from NowSkills just a day after but in my eagerness to secure ‘proper job’, I stalled conversations.

“A month later, after no responses from the hundreds of CVs I sent to apply for entry-level jobs as a digital marketer, I decided to revisit the NowSkills’ emails, the next week I had three meetings which turned into three job offers!

“I’ve now been at click2 learn for over a year with three exams passed and my EPAs well under way with a qualification and potential professional contract on the horizon. The experience being an apprentice has given me have allowed me to develop my skills as a digital marketer and has now left me in a place where I feel like I have an edge in applying for those entry-level jobs that seemed so out of reach just a year ago. A special thanks to NowSkills and click2 learn for the opportunities I have been given.”