Case Study:

How deciding to Back the Future has yielded positive results for RS Group...

As more companies are joining the pledge to Back the Future, we look at what results are already being achieved in today’s case study with Back the Future pledger & a company investing for the long-term in their people, RS Group...

Objectives

Our main objective when it comes to apprenticeships is to identify roles around the business that we struggle to recruit for or retain talent for.

‘This could mean that instead of constantly recruiting experienced hires into roles that they aren’t perfect for we grow an apprentice into these roles, and they are then a perfect fit.’

This means the roles we identify are ‘real jobs’ and a start to a real career in any of our business functions including Supply Chain, Technology, Finance, Marketing, Sales and Engineering Maintenance.

Implementation 

The apprenticeships are driven by the business need and the first step is to look at the specific role. We ask what the end goal is for taking on an apprentice, what support we can offer in the teams and how can we assess these potential skills.

Starting with a specific role

As we start with a specific role, we have a target salary for the apprentice once they graduate. This helps us to agree upon a starting salary that reflects the value the apprentice will produce and helps us to plan a salary increase pathway that works toward their graduation date.

Annual Bonus Structure

The apprentices are included in our annual bonus structure and benefit from all the usual benefits like share saves, private medical insurance as well as many other benefits.

Building Careers

The initial salary considers the level of the apprenticeship and the calibre of the candidates we want to attract. We are looking to build careers not just employ apprentices. We thereby need our apprentices to feel valued and to see their future with us.

Our apprentices are paid very generously, and we review their salaries each year to ensure that their new knowledge, skills and behaviours are recognised throughout the apprenticeship and extends beyond when they graduate.

Results

The result of all of this is that we are solving the original objective. 100% of our apprentices that complete their apprenticeship whilst employed with us are offered permanent roles. We have increased the number of Gen Z employees across the business and are growing a more stable future for the business.

Apprenticeships have helped our diversity strategy too. For example, in Software Engineering our apprentices have been 50:50 male and female in an industry that is closer to 90:10. We have worked with companies like the Association of Young Black Engineers to promote some of our roles to a wider audience.

Building future leaders

Some of our apprentices are continuing their learning and are progressing to degree level apprenticeships as part of their career development in their permanent roles. This means we are building Future Leaders.

The competitive wages have increased the value of the apprentices internally. We don’t view the apprentices as a ‘nice thing to do’ but instead they are valuable members of our teams and are helping steer the organisation to a brighter future.

Creating community

Some of our apprentices built a global community called Bloomers to bring together all the next generation employees and to break down silos to make our organisation more welcoming and inclusive.

A bit more about RS Group

Across the industrial design, manufacturing and maintenance worlds, we’re the digital destination for product and service solutions to help our customers with the maintenance, repair and operation of their businesses.

We provide global access to an unrivalled range of over 750,000 stocked industrial products. Each day our team of experts deliver solutions to resolve our customer’s challenges across design, procurement, inventory and maintenance. We consistently strive to deliver the best possible service to all our customers and challenge ourselves to provide a seamless procurement experience.

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