Leather Covering Apprentice Review

The apprenticeship is made up of different placements, these are often in different areas of the leather shop though there is some opportunity to explore other departments. The placement that you are in affects the day-to-day activities, in production areas for example, you spend time learning about all of the different processes and techniques used to produce the leather parts. Office based placements such as planning, production control and quality usually require you to work through a small projects or complete little tasks for the associates whilst spending sometime shadowing them. You also often get given random projects to assist with other departments, these tend to require you to solve a problem by producing something, this could be to protect or hold parts or similar, these are usually more interesting as it requires a level of resourcefulness and allows you to think through a problem, experimenting with different techniques and talking to different people with different skills, I have probably learnt most of my skills through these projects and they provide a good opportunity to meet with people from other areas of the business. In my experience, the most interesting placements tend to be outside of the leather shop as there is much more variety in the day-to-day tasks.

Throughout the first year I learnt loads of new skills as the way parts are produced in the leather shop is wildly dissimilar to anywhere else, both in the factory and beyond, however after the first year, it became very monotonous very quickly and you find that you aren't learning quite so much as you perhaps could, the issue with many production placements is that they are very samey and the skills you learn in one area are transferrable to another area, meaning that you run out of things to learn fairly quickly. I have found myself having to persuade people to give me placements and projects in other areas in order to continue to feel challenged and learn new things but a lot of the time the focus is on production skills which are only really useful in the production areas and therefore the apprenticeship doesn't really set you up for anything more, which seems a bit pointless when you could go in as an associate and learn the same thing. College wise, as part of the apprenticeship you attend an upholstery and soft furnishings course two days a week and although the skills that you learn here are, in my opinion, more interesting, they are not relevant to the work you complete in plant. The skills that I have learnt through the college course are extensive and even with very little time remaining I am still learning new things.

I enjoy the college course though it is incredibly badly organised which can be really stressful at times, but I know that others on my course really dislike college and would prefer to be in work. At work, my level of enjoyment varies massively, when associates are prepared to give you the time of day to go through their role and explain what is happening and why or provide interesting projects or placements that encourage you to learn and understand, it can be great there are all sorts of highly skilled people who are more than willing to help and teach you anything you need to know. On the flip side, which is what happens most of the time is that you are given lots of mundane tasks to complete which are normally just the ones no-one else wants to do, for example laminating and cutting things out. Many areas see apprentices as a burden as they stay in an area for a short period of time and so aren't really worth their time training and because they are often new to an area there is often an assumption that they aren't capable and therefore aren't given anything to do for fear of setting others back. The factory is also a very male-dominated place in most areas and there can be a bit of a lad-ish culture which can make you very uncomfortable.

My college course/ apprenticeship structure has changed more times than I can count over the 2 1/2 years I have been here and the college is very unclear as to what work needs to be produced, when it needs to be completed by and what needs to be included in it. At the end of my first year they told us we would be coming back to a year of traditional upholstery, which when we turned up on the day turn out to actually be soft furnishings, when this was mentioned to work they had had no idea about the change and no one could really explain why this had happened and so it was just went along with. Placement structures are largely variable, they change all the time and sometimes you end up returning to areas you have already been to when there are other areas which you haven't been given the opportunity to experience. Each apprentice has a mentor and it is luck of the draw as to whether they will help and encourage you or more or less ignore you.

The support teams are good, my manager and trainer provide all sorts of different support from providing time to catch up with college work, to helping source information and organising college etc. However there is a lot of miscommunication between the college and the company which can be very frustrating as if everyone sat down together it could run a lot smoother. In terms of placements and individual development, I think that the placements and projects that are undertaken at work should be more tailored to the skillset and interests of the apprentice with a set goal of working in a particular department at the end of the apprenticeship in mind throughout, with support provided from that area throughout to gain the necessary skills needed during the time available as an apprentice

The college is very disorganised and lots of the information about the work that needs to be produced, the content and time scale is very vague and very changeable. The course structure is sketchy and subject to change, the tutor often doesn't know what is required in order to complete the course and for some of the work I am supposed to be handing in in the next month or so, the framework for the course has not yet been published, this leads to lots of work being thrown at you at very short notice despite repeated requests to clarify what is required.

Whilst I enjoy the college course and I am grateful for the skills that I have learnt through the course, it is not remotely relevant to the work that we do in plant. There are vague overlaps such as sewing techniques but for the majority of the course there is no relevance. The college course is designed to be used within the furniture and as such, many of the criteria required to meet the course requirements are based around the furniture industry which is obviously very different to automotive manufacturing, in almost every way, this causes lots of confusion and lots of the work we do has to be manipulated to meet the guidelines.

There are not any extra curricular activities to get involved in outside of work, every now and then there is a work night out or people will go out for dinner but that is normally more as a group of friends rather than through work and is organised as such.

No

The course has so much potential to be amazing, they have the skills, the people and the infrastructure but at the moment the expectation of apprentices within the leather shop is just to go onto production which seems like a waste of all of the skills and knowledge that you have spent the apprenticeship building up, you might as well just go in as an associate if that's what you want to do

Try to get experience in as many different areas of the plant as you can, work hard and do as many projects as possible, they enable you to meet all sorts of different people and are good for developing your different skills, often the placements/ projects I have enjoyed most have been the ones in areas I didn't know existed so try everything.