Joanne Senior

Level 3 Team Leader/Supervisor Apprenticeship Standard

I am a production team leader in the cutting room for a widescale high end fashion brand, a lot of my job involves planning and flowing tasks effectively through a shift to make sure everyone has a constant flowing amount work to do from the day shift through to the night shift.

When my organisation was recruiting for employees to go on an apprenticeship, I was not keen at first and I was very opposed to doing it. This is because I did not have much confidence in myself and I under estimate what I can achieve. I left school and landed the job where I am still currently and I have worked my way up,  I was in my work bubble and did not think I needed any training, up until a year ago I had never been on a computer and my IT skills was very bad. Since going on the apprenticeship, I am much more confidence with my IT now and my confidence has improve hugely, the apprenticeship has helped me reflect on how I went about my working day to day to how I do now and I work more efficient and with confidence.

During March, my organisation shut during Covid-19, I volunteered to continue to work to make PPE for the NHS, I felt that my time was stretched but I did not want this to affect my ability to keep pushing to complete assessment evidence. As part of my apprenticeship I have completed End Point Assessment, this was done via Microsoft Teams so, I am glad I pushed myself and so did my assessor to help me within my IT skills so I could carry out my final assessments which enabled me to complete my apprenticeship. My end point assessor was very friendly and made me feel at ease and helped me relax into the assessment process. I achieved a Merit for my EPA and I was very surprised so, I am very proud of myself for achieving this.

One of the most effective things I have learnt is how to manage conflict, before the apprenticeship I used to deal with conflict completely the wrong way and now I stop and go somewhere to think about how I need to tackle it and respond which has been really effective, I would like to continue to progress my learning, currently we have lots of projects going on within my organisation so I believe furthering my knowledge to help within these areas would be beneficial.

I have never done a qualification like this before or had a job interview in a long time so this was all very new to me but I am so glad I found the confidence to do this! If I could give any advice to anyone is to do it!