WISKA

St Columb-Major based WISKA UK Ltd develops innovative products for the electrical wholesale market.

WISKA’s Apprenticeship programme with Truro and Penwith College has been successfully developing talent for over 10-years, with Apprentices progressing to full-time employment in Administration, Customer Service, Warehouse Operations, Accountancy and Marketing, and staff from the early years of the programme now working in managerial and supervisory roles.

Elliott Rothon, Marketing Manager at WISKA UK Ltd, commented: “The two biggest things the College’s Apprenticeship programme gives us is the opportunity to help develop young people and grow talent from within as a long-term recruitment solution.

“We often look to recruit Apprentices where there are skills gaps in the business with a view to them moving into a permanent role on completion of their training.”

Marketing Apprentice Chloe Booth not only added capacity when the marketing team were experiencing increasing workload pressures but made significant impacts on revenue as a direct result of her Apprenticeship training.

Elliott continued: “The Apprenticeship course challenged Chloe to take a product line and increase sales. We came up with the concept of a campaign, involving a giveaway. Chloe manged the campaign from start to finish, marketing on a range of print and digital channels and internal communications and systems to make sure orders were delivered successfully.

“We saw a significant increase in short-term sales and are continuing to see increases long-term now that buyers have tried the product. One group even named us their ‘Supplier of the Year’.”

Chloe has successfully completed her training and is another of WISKA’s many successful Apprentices to have been retained by the business in a permanent role.

Elliott said: “The best thing about working with the College is that we keep up-to-date with new trends in the industry, Chloe brought back and shared lots of new ideas with us and the programme gives us a really good platform to grow our own employees.

“We know the College is training our staff to a high standard for us to employ, giving them the knowledge and understanding needed to continue their careers with us.”