One week away with the Lindley Trust for Apprentices

Our apprentices take pride in growing their skills and their confidence. And we’re proud to help make that happen. We recently sent them to the Peak District with the Lindley Trust for a five-day residential retreat. While there, they got involved in outdoor activities that were fun but also a way to develop behaviours they’d benefit from personally and professionally.

By having a custom programme for all our apprentices, we can focus on communication, teamwork, confidence building and much more. A welcoming presentation from some of our senior leaders is the perfect way to go over our values and behaviours before creating teams and spending some time getting to know each other.

Over the five days, our apprentices enjoyed canoeing and rafting which helped them develop their communication skills. By sharing the task, they were responsible for the other team’s success! Going on a trek allowed them to work on their teamwork and navigation – we made sure there were plenty of other tasks on the way, including flying their own team flag. They also got to go caving, abseiling, rock climbing and biking, and braved any fear of heights with high rope activities and zip-lining!

See for yourself, and watch our short film about the week, here. 

Poppy Wolfarth, Early Careers Business Partner, was all for pushing barriers and looking at important behaviours and values: “It becomes a real great friendship circle for people to express who they are and be who they are. We find that our apprentices really start to become true friends….they can rely on the people within their team to really rally around them and support them.”

A teamwork and group approach means that teams focus on who needs support and when – we’re proud that the teams usually finish all the activities together! And the different activities are more than fun – they’re great examples to carry into the workplace. Poppy also saw people’s confidence grow: “That’s exactly what we wanted to see in our apprentices, that journey from being a shy individual to being really confident at the end. Some of the greatest wow moments were from shy individuals!”

If you join MAN as an apprentice, you’ll also get to go on a residential programme. How would your skills develop? We know you’d come back feeling proud. Find out more on joining us as an Apprentice here.