The company has constructed the purpose-built facility at its Mossfield Road headquarters to provide a dedicated resource for its future workforce
Trailer manufacturer Don-Bur has invested over £50,000 in a new training hub to support the next generation of engineers.
The Stoke-on-Trent company has constructed the purpose-built facility at its Mossfield Road headquarters, in Adderley Green, to provide a dedicated resource for its future workforce.
The new hub is a tailored area for trainees and apprentices – most of which come from Don-Bur’s training partner, NSEG Training Association – to learn welding, coachbuilding, fitting and assembly.
Mark Hudson, operations director at Don-Bur, said: As a business, we recognise that it is getting harder and harder to find skilled labour, so we took the initiative to partner with NSEG to train our own employees.
When we recruit a new apprentice or trainee, they spend time at the training hub before they move into the workshop with more experienced staff, he said.
Our trainees can be just starting out in their career, or fancy a change or it may be someone who has lost their job and wants to get back into work. It’s important to us that they all have the right attitude, he said.
Mark added: While the idea is for us to train our own future employees, there is an opportunity for us to contribute to the wider industry too. If other local businesses see what we are doing they might want to follow in our footsteps or come to us to see if we can help with their training needs.
Human resources manager, Lisa Blake, said: It is important that businesses like Don-Bur invest in apprentices and upskilling so we can strengthen and develop our colleagues for the future of the business.
Blake said: We are always on the lookout for trainees and we have new intakes several times a year, we have had some great success with some of our recent trainees – it’s great to see them grow in confidence.
Hub trainer Steve Abbotts has been at Don-Bur since 1999 where he started in roof fabrication.
He added: Learning to weld is a bit like learning to drive, once you’ve passed your test, you then start learning.