Read how Damar Training are supporting apprentices through the current pandemic
We recently spoke to Jonathan Bourne from Stockport-headquartered training provider Damar Training about how their business is responding to COVID-19 and how they are supporting employers and apprentices through this unprecedented situation to help them to ‘carry on learning’.
Damar Training has a 40-year legacy of successfully delivering apprenticeship training and has worked with thousands of apprentices and many of the country’s leading employers.
How has your team at Damar been impacted by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak?
There isn’t a single business in the country that hasn’t been significantly impacted by COVID-19 and ours is no exception. The outbreak and the measures introduced by the Government to tackle it have resulted in huge disruption and uncertainty for colleagues, apprentices and our partner-employers.
We work hard to plan apprenticeships in partnership with employers and apprentices, responding to the individual needs of both. In mid-March, those needs changed almost overnight as apprentices began to work from home, were furloughed or became busier than ever because they are front-line workers. Scheduled exam dates were cancelled as exams were put on hold and end-point assessments were no longer available for some standards.
As our partner-employers were impacted, their recruitment plans also started to change. Although some recruitment took place in March, most planned recruitment was put on hold and development programmes for existing employees were also postponed. That, coupled with a drop in completions, resulted almost immediately in a revenue shortfall which will of course grow over time.
