Damar Training: Five Days, Five Apprentices – Day Five

Stockport-based Churchwood Finance Group currently employs over 300 staff. The company established an apprenticeship programme in partnership with Damar Training five years ago, since when over sixty members of the Churchwood team have successfully completed qualifications.
Churchwood is a great example of an employer that has embedded apprenticeships into its business, all the way from recruiting young people into the business as apprentices to using apprenticeship qualifications as a structured way to improve the skills of existing employees.
Georgina Town is an existing member of staff who has really made the most of her advanced apprenticeship qualification. She joined Churchwood as an administrator in 2005 and was promoted to administration manager three years later. As a new manager she wanted to develop her skills and an advanced apprenticeship in management was the perfect vehicle for this. Since completing her qualification, Georgina has continued to progress at work and recently began a specialist higher level financial services qualification.
Churchwood’s ‘whole organisation’ approach to apprenticeships has delivered improved employee retention & engagement as well as benefits to a wide range of employees – not just managers like Georgina, but also employees working in administrative positions, customer-facing and accounting roles. It has also paid off externally – Damar was proud to present Churchwood Finance Group with its Employer of the Year award for 2011.