We are rightly proud of all our apprentices - and our award-winning apprenticeship scheme. It is National Apprenticeship Week. At Ringley, we continue to champion young talent, here's how we do it.

Ringley is proud to be a Silver Investor in People.  We have been recognised over the years for a number of our talent management programmes including a National Training Award, Employer of the Year for Camden & Islington, and Remploy awards for our work with special needs employees. Our work with Apprentices was specifically recognised when our IT department picked up a 'diversity award' from Maggie Philbin, OBE. At Ringley, we aim to inspire our people to create next-gen working through proptech.   We are always looking for the next generation of tech superstars and this diversity award spurred us on to widen the scope of our apprenticeship intake We have had some stars over the years whose careers we continue to track. A number are still with us, either doing higher-level apprenticeships or have moved on to degrees and even a masters! (see Wednesday's blog) What makes an apprentice perfect for us is a can-do attitude and enthusiasm to get things done. Positive, focused young talent simply sets a great tone for the workplace and brings a little something more in terms of perspective on future thinking trends and creative problem-solving.

Just one example of the true greatness of one of our IT boys, was when one acted as a mentor to a special needs IT apprentice who has autism. This superhero, Matthew, has since gone on to run our Dev Ops which now, almost 10 years later, he does from Canada! In our business, we believe an apprentice is someone who :

• is focused and knows that getting stuck into a problem is the only way to solve it
• listens hard and gives their peers great confidence by asking questions to get it right,
• people willingly give up their time for, because they know their input is appreciated,
• makes light work of the menial tasks and gets them done so as to not delay larger projects,
• puts in the time for self-learning
• will simply be there and stay late without you needing to ask them.

Apprentices make a real impact on our future thinking and we are pleased to support them in attaining key qualifications on the road to a successful IT career, as well as helping them develop the cunning they will need to survive the workplace alongside their peers!