Apprentices to tackle "chronic skills shortage"
The UK's leading flooring contractor has created its own apprenticeship scheme to tackle the "chronic skills shortage" in the industry which has led to a "bidding war" for fitters.
Designer Contracts took on its first batch of 10 apprentices last week, taking advantage of the new block release training scheme that has been launched as a joint venture between FITA (Flooring Industry Training Association) and Webs Training Ltd.
The 16 to 18-year-old apprentices will do practical training (one block week every eight weeks). In between – over the course of the three year apprenticeship scheme – they will train with one of the company's employed or sub-contract fitters.
"This represents a significant moment for us as a company as well as the new industry training initiative," says Louise Walters, commercial director for Designer Contracts.
"Apprenticeships and further training are one way in which we can tackle the chronic skills shortage. And as the UKs largest flooring contractor, we are delighted to be leading the way, but are also acutely aware that there is no one ‘simple fix’ to the wider skills problem," she said.
Designer Contracts has also been recruiting and directly employing more fitters rather than relying solely on contractors. Over the past two years, it has taken on more than 25 fitters, many of them in the past 12 months – and going forward the company plans is to directly employ even more.
"We still have around 300 contract fitters on our books," says Louise, "but as many in the industry will know, accessing this pool of trades people has become increasingly difficult over the past three years. This has effectively led to something of a bidding war in order to obtain the services of a fitter, and indeed, we ourselves have lifted our install rates as the industry standards have increased."
FITA is also creating a bespoke Designer Contracts’ training standard so they can assess and further develop its trained employed fitters. Under this, fitters will go in to the FITA training centre to be assessed on the installation of vinyls, domestic carpet, LVT and sub-floor preparation and laminate.
