Severn Trent is a water and wastewater services provider to over 8 million customers in the Midlands. We spoke to Jade Pearson, New Talent Lead, at Severn Trent to get insight into their apprenticeship programmes.
We deliver an essential service to our communities and we’re really passionate about going beyond this service too – we want to have a positive impact on our customers and communities. We heavily invest in local employment opportunities through meaningful jobs and early careers. It’s in the DNA of who we are at Severn Trent and it’s integral to our skills needs.
Why does Severn Trent provide apprenticeship opportunities?
“We offer a range of entry programmes into our organisation and apprenticeships are a major part of our offering. They are a great way for us to develop the future skills we need, particularly the core technical skills. We also value the diverse, fresh ideas, perspectives and innovation that having apprentices (and especially young people) delivers.
The types of programmes we recruit for will vary year on year because it’s driven by business need, and we typically take on between 100 – 130 apprentices a year as new hires.”
What does your outreach and recruitment for apprenticeships look like?
“When we recruit we use social media campaigns and advertise our roles using third party partners and websites to get them in front of as many job seekers as possible, but we try to do as much as possible in house to ensure we’re investing our money and time wisely for return on investment.
We’ve got a defined outreach and attraction strategy and as part of that we’ve built great partnerships with local schools and colleges. Our DNI ambition as an organisation is to reflect the communities we serve and have an impact on those that need our help most.
For example, that’s why we tend to prioritise schools and colleges in areas of lower socio-economic status and who have a higher than average number of students eligible for free school meals. We know that we’re in the top 10-20 percentile on the IMD index so we’ve forged these longer relationships over the last couple of years.
We love to visit the schools and deliver career talks, and it’s great when students can see somebody like them, so we use the ‘see it to believe it’ model by taking our apprentices to share their story. They act as relatable and inspiring role models who are close in age and may have similar lived experience, and they show local young people how their apprenticeship has added value to their career and life.
We also have a school/college work experience programme where we pledge to host 500 students a year. It ranges from 1 day to 2 weeks of in person placements, to insight days, to virtual work experience. We give the students challenges and projects to work on while they develop key employability skills like communication and teamwork. It’s all designed to meet the Gatsby Benchmarks for what good work experience looks like.
We try to meet the students preferences as much as we possibly can by matching their placement to their interests. This allows students to get a sense of the reality of roles in a certain department, including the working environment, day to day activities and deliverables. They can then make considered choices over whether it’s something they are genuinely interested in and can see themselves thriving in.
After their time with us, they’ll walk away with a better understanding of our water industry careers and we’ve hopefully raised their aspirations too.”
What support do you provide to young people during the recruitment process?
“We are very much a ‘human touch’ organisation and we’re a disability confident employer too. We encourage candidates to share any reasonable adjustments that they need. If they indicate this during the process, then they’ll get a phone call from our team to talk through what this looks like for them so we can flex around what they need. We also run application webinars and open events at our site where people can come to have a chat and ask us questions.
Candidates who make it to our final stage, which is face to face at an assessment centre, will get a personalised call to talk through what will happen there, to answer any questions, and to again check if they need any reasonable adjustments. We want to see the best of people so when they’re going through our recruitment process, we want to make sure we’re creating a level playing field. That’s really important to them and to us.”
For successful candidates, what does the induction process look like for these young people who are probably experiencing the world of work for the first time? How do you integrate them into your company culture?
“For us, it starts before induction. We run pre-joiner events in the weeks before they join us. We have a lot of people that join straight out of school so we invite their parents/guardians along to meet us and get the confidence that their child is going to be well supported. I had a lovely conversation with two parents who couldn’t believe the level of care that we put into helping our apprentices transition out of school and into our workplace.
These events are also a really nice opportunity for the apprentices to start building their network and relationships across their cohort so that day one on the job doesn’t feel so scary. They’ll also meet their contacts from the new talent team, including line managers and mentors who’ll they’ll have met at the assessment centre too. They get the opportunity to have more in-depth conversations about what their first couple of weeks will look like and ask any questions they have.
For the under 18s, we run a specific session where we talk to them about the differences between education and work environments, and the expected workplace behaviours. It’s a nice way to approach this in a conversational way instead of lecturing at them. We can build an understanding and help them adapt.
We’ve learnt that this is something important to do from our previous inductions and even now we’re still learning about the best way to help bridge the gap so that it won’t feel like a huge leap for our apprentices.
After these events, they’ll then have a week-long induction with us. This year, we’re trying a different approach by bringing our apprentices and graduates together in their business functions. We aim to bring graduates and apprentices closer together, and enable stronger networking and relationships across the two cohorts. It’s important to us that there is equity between our graduates and apprentices and they feel equally valued and supported in their programmes. Bringing them together in their business functions will allow us to better bring to life the opportunities and challenges facing the business unit, and the key projects and priorities, with the opportunity to meet with Senior Leaders.
They love the first week. They all come together, from over 40 locations, and they stay in a safeguarded hotel. This induction is a lovely way for them to build networks and relationships, and to just get immersed in our organisation.”
Do you directly involve young people in the design and delivery of your programmes?
“For everything we do, whether it’s work experience or even a pre-joiner event, we’ll ask for feedback. Once people are on our programmes, we run quarterly experience surveys to identify what’s working, what they love, or what they struggle with etc. They of course get guidance from their training provider, but we want to make sure they get the right support from their line manager or mentor too.”
What support do they get on the apprenticeship programme, and how do you prepare line managers to provide this?
“A great line manager and the support and coaching they provide is essential for our apprentices. Having a mentor who can help with the everyday scenarios our apprentices will navigate is crucial too. That’s why we invest in line manager and mentor training for managing apprentices, which includes safeguarding and prevent training.
In operations, the apprentice will be paired with a mentor who can complete practical tasks with them whilst also overseeing health and safety regulations. We teach through observation and then completing the activity to ensure our apprentices do things safely and understand the operating procedures. In our business and office based apprenticeships, good line management and mentoring will look different.
Our apprentices are supported throughout their apprenticeship too, as well as in their role at Severn Trent. We check in with them on a one to one level and we host informal drop in sessions to connect with them and discuss how things are going in a group setting. The investment in our induction process created an environment where our apprentices are quite comfortable with approaching our team with any concerns. We’ve also built really strong relationships with our training providers so we get constant learner progression updates and can address any of our own concerns about a learner who may be dropping behind. This allows us to have an exploratory conversation with the apprentice to see what’s going on and how we can support them to get back on track.”
Once apprentices have finished their programme, what do their progression opportunities look like?
“We really value apprentices in our organisation, so everyone will start on a permanent contract. Our intention for every apprentice is that they will stay at Severn Trent post-apprenticeship and use the programme to train for their specific role.
In our job adverts, we’re transparent about the typical role that an apprentice will move into once they’ve completed their apprenticeship. It’s the goal that everyone is working towards and that clarity is really important for the apprentice. It’s important for us as well from a workforce planning perspective; we need to know where these apprentices will take roles at Severn Trent.
Around 6 months before they complete their apprenticeship, we’ll start to have those conversations with them about what their role looks like off scheme, what the process will be, and details like the date they can expect to move into their role post End Point Assessment, and their salary. We also pick up conversations about career aspirations and development in their 12 month personal development plan which really embeds into our overall performance management system.”
What are the key things that keep apprentices at Severn Trent?
“We ask quite often about what it is that makes them stay. The fact that they feel supported and valued, and the fact that we talk about the success of our apprentices regularly and openly is one. Our CEO loves to chat to them when she’s on site and they genuinely feel like an integrated and valued part of the team.
We’re also up front about their future career so there’s no uncertainty about their next steps. I think they see the success of their colleagues around them too because we’ve got a strong track record of internal mobility and progression, so to have those real role models around them shows them how far they can go.”
