Deputy First Minister John Swinney has marked the start of Scottish Apprenticeship Week with a visit to SSE’s training centre in Perth
The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth met with John Stewart, SSE Director of Human Resources, and technical skills trainees and apprentices, who were holding workshops with second and third year pupils from Auchterarder school.
An internal report for SSE shows that for every £1 the company invests in apprentices there is an economic return on that investment of £4.29 – and for technical trainees it is £7.65
Swinney said: “Modern Apprentices bring a positive impact to business and industry and SSE’s own figures show that they are also bringing a tangible economic return here – as well as the very real investment in young people’s futures.
“The Scottish Government is committed to supporting young people towards jobs and apprenticeships and latest figures show we are on course to have created over 100,000 new opportunities over the last four years. The ‘human capital’ report published by SSE shows that this is not only good news for apprentices, but good news for Scottish business.”
John Stewart said: “Apprenticeships put young people on track for a first rate career and give people all over the country that all-important first chance.
“Every year since 2007 over 100 new apprentices have joined our apprenticeship programme, which offers sustainable long term jobs. And by long-term I mean long-term, we have a retention rate of over 90% and some of our senior executives joined SSE themselves as trainees or apprentices, and have never looked back since.”
This year SSE will welcome an intake of 146 apprentices – 21 more than 2014. It’s backing the talent of tomorrow to the tune of £11.68m this year, investing an average of £80,000 per apprentice.
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