INEOS is now indirectly helping small companies find first-class apprentices – through Tom Crotty.
Tom recently became chairman of Cogent, a group of leading businessmen empowered to raise standards in the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, nuclear, oil and gas, petroleum and polymer industries, and expand opportunities for young people in the UK.
“The problem isn’t in the big companies because they can afford to employ apprentices and train them,” he said.
“But if you are a small engineering company, you might feel it’s too risky to take on an apprentice, so instead you find a 35-year-old who works down the road.”
“With Cogent’s support, he hoped that would change.”
“Cogent would employ the apprentices on a three-year programme,” he said.
“The company would bear half the cost but they would not have the headache of employing the individual.”
“And if they didn’t like them, we would find them someone else.”
Tom said Cogent’s brief would include convincing school-leavers about the value of apprenticeships.
“We need to get rid of the perception that apprenticeships mean mud on your boots or oil in your hair,” he said.
Rising university fees were concentrating the minds of young people to appreciate that gaining skills in an industry was a clear path to a career and a prosperous future, said Tom.
Cogent is the Sector Skills Council for the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, nuclear, oil and gas, petroleum and polymer industries.
In the past, skills councils were awarded a fixed amount of money by the Government. Now they have to bid for it.
And Cogent is so far faring very well.