World Youth Skills Day 2021

15th July, 2021

smellings

Community

Today (15th July) is World Youth Skills Day.

Young people are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and in the current job market they are exposed to lower quality jobs, lower paid opportunities, greater labour market inequalities, and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions. With the disruption to education experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic these statistics are even higher as young people look to get into work.

World Youth Skills Day is an opportunity to shine a light on youth employment issues. Here at Connexus we’re committed to supporting our customers, and their families into work, whether that is here at Connexus or with other great employers within our counties.

Apprenticeships at Connexus

We have apprenticeship opportunities coming soon for a range of roles including, trades like plumbing and electrics, office-based positions like property surveyor and human resources.

Apprenticeships are a great way to build and develop new and existing skills. They can also be a gateway into an organisation, where you can build a career in your chosen profession.

Not only do you get an apprenticeship and associated qualification, you’ll have access to an array of other training, from excel & word, leadership, management, first-aid, mental health first aid, safeguarding, to name but a few.

All this plus a great welfare package, plenty of annual leave, and lots of other benefits, as well as working for a great company that is helping to create stronger, better, brighter communities.

Find out more

Are you or a member of your family looking to apply for one our apprenticeships?

We’re running online sessions for you, our residents. The session will give you tips on what makes a good CV, what you should include in an application, what an interview and apprenticeship would look like.

The session will be for around an hour – two hours long.

If you’re interested in a session, please fill out the following form:

Webform

Real Living Wage here at Connexus

We feel that it’s really important that everyone is fairly and appropriately rewarded for their efforts and so we have opted to join the 7,000 other UK employers who have opted to do the same thing. To recognise our apprentices, they will also be paid the real living wage from the second year of their apprenticeship. In the first year they will receive the National Living wage rate for those over 23 as determined by the government, irrespective of their actual age.

What is the real living wage?

It’s statutory that all employers must pay their staff a fair and minimum wage for their work. At the moment, the Government has outlined that nationally (excluding London) the hourly rates of pay are: £8.36 for under 23 year of age and £8.91 for over 23 year olds of age.

Connexus feels that this payment doesn’t go far enough in recognising the real contribution its staff make to its customers and so have opted to go above this, and pay the real living wage.

The real living wage, set annually by the Real Living Wage Foundation and gives employees a wage that meets their everyday living needs. This is reviewed every November by the Foundation. The real living wage is a voluntary hourly amount that goes above any statutory payments. Connexus has committed to paying all staff, including apprentices in their second year of placement - £9.50 an hour.

You can find out more about the Real Living Wage here

We are also investigating whether it will be possible for us to become an accredited living wage employer which means that as well as paying all our employees the Real Living Wage we will put in place a plan to encourage our contractors to pay the Real Living Wage too

Life At Connexus

"Connexus was offering amazing apprenticeship opportunities and this was a great starting point in my career."

Read what our people say