Apprenticeships

An apprenticeship is a paid job where the employee learns and gains valuable experiences.

Alongside their role, apprentices spend at least 20% of their working hours completing classroom-based learning with a college, university or training provider, learning new skills in the workplace and developing their knowledge of the subject they are studying, which leads to a nationally recognised qualification. All we ask of our apprentices is that they are engaged and open to learning throughout the course.

An apprenticeship includes:

• Paid employment with holiday leave.
• Hands-on-experience in a sector/role of interest.
• Completing at least 6 hours of dedicated development each week.
• Formal assessment which leads to a nationally recognised qualification.

Apprenticeships are open to people over the age of 16 in England with courses lasting between 12 months to 5 years, depending on the level. These are ideal for people who may be:

• Early in their career.
• Looking to upskill in their current role.
• Looking for a career change.
• Not in full-time education.

An apprenticeship is hard work and requires our colleagues to be committed and driven, but we aim to offer as much support and guidance as we can, whether that’s from your colleagues, your mentor or our in-house learning and development team to ensure you are successful.

As we are a diverse organisation, the apprenticeship development courses we offer are broad and varied, but relevant to the business area you could be working in. Examples of this include:

• Retail apprenticeships for colleagues working in our food business, which could be from customer service through to operations management.
• Travel apprenticeships for our travel colleagues.
• Apprenticeships in our funeral business, at both level 2 and level 3, building the skills of the colleague to understand the funeral operation, including arrangement and directing.

This is just a snapshot of the possible career pathways you can take. Take a look at our colleague testimonials to see what they’ve been studying towards.

From time to time, we will advertise apprenticeship level opportunities on our careers website. You can sign up for career alerts and state that you are interested in an apprenticeship. This means you’ll be notified of any apprenticeship opportunities, so you’ll never miss the chance to apply.

Some of our standard job roles may also come with the opportunity to study an apprenticeship. As an example, in our food business, we may offer the following development pathway:

Customer Services Assistant -> Food Team Leader -> Food Store Manager

Level 3 Team Leading -> Level 4 Retail Manager -> Level 6 CMDA (Degree)

We offer similar development pathways across all our business areas from Funerals to Support Services, so keep an eye out for any opportunities to join us.

An apprenticeship can start at any level, but some may require:

• previous qualifications such as English or maths at GCSE level or equivalent.
• additional training in English or maths to ensure the apprentice is at the right level.

To find out more about the equivalent educational levels, click here.

We are committed to offering additional support and training to help you achieve these important qualifications.