PR & Communications Apprentice Review

My role at Sage is within the PR & Communications team, I support with both internal and external communications and deal with a wide variety of tasks and projects in my day-to-day job, this includes: supporting with the organisation of events, writing press releases, blogs, news articles and helping to build and maintain good relationships with our PR agency, the media and the colleagues that work at Sage.

Working at Sage has helped to develop my confidence as I deal with a variety of stakeholders from all over the business and external stakeholders in my daily job. I have developed my writing skills to be able to write in a journalistic style, as I had no previous knowledge of this and I learnt the skills to be able to organise an event as I have supported and lead on several events for both internal and external audiences. There are also great training opportunities available at Sage and through the PRCA to help develop general career skills and technical PR skills.

I enjoy the role that I do at Sage, work well with my team and think that the overall colleague culture at Sage is extremely positive. The apprenticeship with the PRCA however has been less enjoyable as I have experienced delays and problems throughout the course. When starting at Sage, I did not start my qualification until 4/5 months later due to problems with the PRCA and had a period of around a month where I had no tutor and was given no guidance from the PRCA which really impacted my work, I have had to get a contract extension because of this.

The Communications team at Sage is well structured, I am part of a small team in the UK and part of a wider global team consisting of many people and there is a clear hierarchy and with clear task delegation within my small team. I was given a lot of time to settle in to Sage when i first started and had the chance to learn about the company before being given more responsibility in my role. I am allocated one day a week to complete coursework in work and have regular weekly meetings with my manager to discuss progress.

My employer is extremely supportive, especially my small team who make arrangements to ensure I am progressing well with my qualification. I have regular meetings to discuss progress and my manager is really supportive in helping me think of ways to evidence my work in my coursework to ensure i am progressing.

The support I have received from the PRCA has been shocking. For around 1 month I had no tutor. Due to my previous tutor retiring, I was introduced to a new tutor who would tutor me remotely, after being introduced I tried to email her and received no further communication it was only when I got in touch with someone else from the PRCA that i was told that she had resigned. It took a few weeks for the PRCA to assign me a new tutor. On a more positive note, the face-to-face training sessions the PRCA provide are useful.

the PRCA qualification has provided me with some of the knowledge necessary to support the work experience I have gained through working in my role. It provides an explanation and a bit of context around why I do some of the work I do. It is however heavily agency-based and I work in-house.

There are plenty of extra-curricular activities to get involved in at Sage, there are groups and boards to join if a colleague is interested in having some responsibility over dealing with colleagues issues and there are plenty of opportunities to get involved with charity work throughthe Sage Foundation (colleagues get 5 days a year to take out of work to complete charity work).

Yes

Sage is a great company to start your career with, they have developed my skills and have been really accommodating in trying to secure me a permanent role after my apprenticeship ends. There are some great development opportunities to develop your skills especially if you are doing an apprenticeship, as they are aware you will need extra support and training.

I would tell someone that is applying to a Sage apprenticeship to be open-minded in applying for a role. I know many people that have started a career in Sage in one area of the business and have moved to another area to try something new. One tip I would give is to be innovative in the work that you do as that really stands out!