British Gas to take on more engineers

British Gas has announced it will be trebling its number of apprentice engineers over the next 18 months, creating around 1,000 new jobs.

This comes at a time when there is a skills gap of domestic gas engineers across the industry with a shortfall of around 20,000 workers, according to Personnel Today.

The company will invest 40 million into recruitment at its five academy training centres across the UK.

It will also extend the length of its training scheme from one year to 18 months to maximise the learning opportunity for the new employees.

Christ Weston, managing director of British Gas Services, said it was important to provide an enviably high standard of quality training.

Research has shown our apprentices to be 25 per cent more efficient and customer-focused than employees trained elsewhere, he added.

According to a report published by Deloitte's Entrepreneurship UK, 31 per cent of companies asked said a shortage of quality workers was affecting the growth of their business.

ClickAJob Marketing Manager Anders Jensen welcomes the news.

Recession might be threatening, but the world-wide skills shortage is already here, he observes.

So to recruit now is not just plugging the gaps, it's pushing technology ahead exactly when everyone else is thinking of cutbacks, he points out.

The recession will go away, but not the skills gap - which should leave British Gas sitting pretty.

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