Supporting employers to train their way

Family run business, My Cladders Roofing and Cladding, understand the value of apprenticeships and the benefit of being able to train staff your own way.

Director Kendrick Myers, who is also a trade qualified roofer, said that apprentices are a vital part of any trade business.

“Not only do they help to economically support a small growing business but you’re also able to help someone get a kick start into a trade career,” Mr Myers said.

“The biggest advantage of taking on apprentices is being able to teach someone both the right way to do it and also the way that we do things. That’s really important to our business as we work on some pretty specialised stuff,” he said.

Mr Myers has switched all of his apprentices to TAFE Queensland for their training after having previously tried a different Registered Training Provider (RTO).

Mr Myers said that before TAFE Queensland their apprentices just weren’t getting trained.

“If they did it would be very rarely. We also found that the training was very difficult to organise,” Mr Myers said.

“One of our apprentices, lost a whole year of his apprenticeship because they just didn’t do any training or paperwork. They didn’t do anything with him.”

“After returning to TAFE he was able to get Recognition of Prior Learning for his existing skills and his apprenticeship training back on track.”

“We’re really happy that we came back to TAFE Queensland because the most important thing for our apprentices is to get the proper training that’s going to enable them to finish their trade,” he said.

While TAFE Queensland does offer onsite training where applicable, the on-campus or block training delivery still offers a great deal of flexibility for employers.

My Cladders Roofing and Cladding experience peak periods over the summer months, so they choose to send their apprentices to TAFE Queensland during their quieter periods to complete the majority of their training.

“It’s really good to be able to put the apprentices through their block training during our quieter months rather than in our peak times. If we’re really busy we also have the option to transfer them into a different block time which we find really suits our business,” Mr Myers said.

“The flexibility has been fantastic,” he said.

My Cladders Roofing and Cladding have also been using some of the TAFE Queensland Student Support Services.

“One of our apprentices had some challenges on the academic side of things but TAFE’s support staff have been there in class to help assist him and keep him on track with his studies,” Mr Myers said.

“We’ve found the extra support that TAFE offers to be really beneficial.”

“Now that we’ve come back to TAFE it’s been great and we’re not going anywhere again. The guys are getting their apprenticeship training ticked off and we’re really happy as a company.”

“I would definitely recommend making the switch to TAFE Queensland,” he said.

Kenny and the team are just one of the many Australian small to medium businesses that have been able to access the Australian Government’s Supporting Apprentices and Trainees wage subsidy which provides a 50 percent wage subsidy for eligible apprentices or trainees. The subsidy has just been extended until 30 September 2021.

“As a small business, we’ve been able to access the 50 percent wage subsidy for our apprentices which has really benefited us. It’s also helped us to be able to put on a mature aged apprentice where in the past the cost would have been too much for us,” Mr Myers said.

“Knowing that the governments going to support us, we’ve been able to provide him with that first step to becoming a tradesman,” he said.