Ellie and Emma reflect on the benefits of their apprenticeship meetup.
Back in November 2022, we held a meetup for ourselves and apprentices from other organisations, to learn from each other, create a network of like-minded people and develop new skills. At Rambutan, we believe it’s essential to build genuine, trusting relationships; so we ensured this was the tone and environment we created for the event.
Learning from each other’s experiences was a key focus for the day. Our ‘Getting to know you’ session involved an ice-breaker game – a fun twist on ‘Guess Who?’. We then chatted about our comfort, stretch (or learning), and panic zones, reviewing how we could support each other in these different zones. The mindset we choose to adopt, whether that be a fixed or growth mindset, was our key takeaway from this activity.
A session that really resonated with us was ‘Making 2023 our best year ever’. It was a valuable use of time to reflect and consider what milestones we’d like to achieve in the coming year. We looked at the bigger picture for the year ahead, zooming in and beginning to plan how we’d reach these milestones. This ‘Back to the Future’ inspired thinking helped make our goals feel more attainable and sparked great excitement for what our futures may hold.
We then ended the event with a ‘Communication’ session, identifying what world-class communication looks and feels like for us. Using this as our aspiration, we analysed the strengths and weaknesses of our communication right now. It was amazingly useful to then share tips, tricks and techniques with each other, to help us on our journey to become even better world-class communicators.
This year’s National Apprenticeship Week theme was ‘Skills for Life’ and our meetup truly embodied this! We all took away skills we could use, in the short-term on our current apprenticeships, but also transfer forward to our future careers, no matter the role or industry. For us, the meetup was a great opportunity to practice and develop:
• managing a project
• organising and facilitating an event
• presenting in front of new audiences
• building long-lasting relationships
• uniting people with similar interests, from varying backgrounds across different organisations
We look forward to continuing to use and develop these ‘skills for life’. What key learnings have stuck with you throughout your career?
