 Mae'n gofio, yn gweinwch, ein int Yogriw. Mae'n gweinwch, byddwch yn gweinwch ar y cynnwys y bydd yma. Felly fe чтоpech yn ei gweld ar hynny o'r gweithio'r awrwyr hynny. Maen nhw yw y bod chi a oedd yn cymryd yn y plwyd dddogau. Mae'n byw hwn yma wedi'n cyffredinol o'r cyllidau yma. Ac efallai, mae'n gweithio'r gweithio yr ydy chi'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio'r yn cyfeiriadu ar 것을, yn y ffawr hyn, yn ddigonwch gyda'r cyfrifes a'r Prifysgu Fygoedd, ond rydw i arweithio'n gwybod ymgylch i'r reidol. Wrth gwrs, rydw i'n ddim yn siaradau i'n gwybod i schoes i'n mynd i ddigonwch gyrdd ymgylch o'r ffordd o'r ymgylch o'r ddweud. Rydw i'n mynd i'r cyfrifes, byddai'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ymgylch o'r ffordd. Gweithio'r rhai'n amgu oedd yma. Dengyrchu'r bobl yn y Unedda, am Mynd Ym Mhwylwyr, ac Rhoedd adnodd acysgrweithiau ddeunyddol, ac mae'n gwneud hynna yn olyg iawn o'i colli Llywodraeth— oedd wedi'n gwneud a'r pryd-deilydd ym Mhwylwyr yn i'r bobl i rhan o gennych el Clif. Ac mae'r cywroedd yma sy'n cyfrifiad yma yma, ac mae hefyd yr Ym Mhwylwyr ar y cwrslu UK 500 oes bydd o'r companyen Rwy'n gwneud amser yn fawr, rydw i'r 1ft o gweithio i gweithio i gweithio yng Nghymru i'r 1ft o gweithio i gweithio, a gwneud o'r dynai gwneud. Rydw i'n hoffa'r y baban yna, os ydych chi'n gweld ei hynny o'r ddaeth uchelig yn ei gweithio'r Relief Siwn. Fe'n ddysgrifethu kuoli, os ydych chi llofe o'r eich llyfrigol. Mwy o'n watblyg a gweithio i'n gweld ei gweithio o'r ddaeth eich ei gweithio i'r gweithio i'r gyfer eich ddydd wyanol that is the environment in which we operate. I think that the other thing that I've learned about British Opticians is that we are very proud to have won the 2011 Sunday Times Best Big Company to Work for a Award this year. What was particularly pleasing around that was having won that at a time when we are going through really quite significant organisational change with the merger and all of the turmoil that that can create. Rwy'n gweithio'n gwahodd i'w ddim yn ymddangos, ond allan i ddysgu'n gyffredig i'r hynny'r cyffredigau, o'r ffordd o'r meddwl i'r cyffredigau, ydy'r byd, rwy'n ei wneud yn y bwysig o'r ddweud yn ddweud. Rwy'n wedi'n meddwl o'r bod, rwy'n meddwl i'r byd, ac ond i'r bobl gennym ni'n gwybod. Ond yw'r gweithredu i'r bobl, mewn bobl yn ymgyrchol ymddydd, Dyna'r hyn sy'n gallu tynnu'r cychwynnog o'r 90-tych. Da funud ni'n ar 4 ar y cwntr wych yn fuddgol i'r bynnag yw'r opatowm atrwyst. Pwrwyddiad angloedd, Scotland, Ilywyr, i'r ysbryd! Felly yw'r amgylch i'r ysbryd a gennym gwybodaeth i'r anhyglwethaf ac yn brin sydd. A nad yw'n ymddai i'r ar交ori dyma, rwyf i'r clynyddu ar y gyffredinio proffesiwnol yn ei ddwyllgor cyllidiau. I love doing that work for about 11 years. My Introducing to Apprenticeships came last summer and I was asked to pick up responsibility for a scheme that was already in existence in Dollund and Atreson and we were looking at how we might map that across the broader boots stable. We are the largest provider of apprenticeships in the UK optics industry and the story really is that the background to this programme was really embedded in the culture of Dollund and Atreson. We had a very structured NVQ programme which colleagues absolutely loved and I think this is one of the things that we as stakeholders in this need to get out there. We can all talk about the value and the hard measures that apprenticeships bring but one of the things that I found really inspirational is the impact that getting a qualification has on people's self-belief and aspiration and belief that they can go on and do other things and I'm not sure we really have a great way of measuring that but these are the stories that I think can inspire people. So I think it's incumbent on all of us to carry those messages through. Some of the things that Dollund Atreson were really strong with was that they were absolutely consistent around whether it was funded or non-funded learners but we did have some good KPIs and we looked at the impact that training people had. Just to keep it really simple the blue line would be a measure of productivity as we go left to right on the graph as we increase the capability of someone there, their productivity went up. The red line actually is customer service measure. What our customers told us about their interactions with our people and it created the evidence that actually not only by training people do we get a more productive workforce but we also make our customers happier. So there's some real added value in the kind of hard and soft measures around running an apprenticeship programme. We had a few challenges though. We had one training centre in Birmingham and it was running residential courses. Now for any of you that go into an opticians you'll probably be aware that the workforce is predominantly young female and often in retailing part-time. Residential courses in Birmingham didn't really fit with that work-life balance so we really had to look at how we made the programme more accessible to our colleagues. It was also, we probably weren't really operating at pace in terms of a retail environment that the programme was probably a bit overly technical if I'm honest and lacked some of those softer skills which actually really drove some of the things around how customers felt about dealing with our colleagues. We also had a slight problem that just as we did the merger the awarding organisation exited the optic sector so that was a slight fly in the ointment. So what have we done in the last year? Really the journey we're on is about really trying to inspire our people to be passionate about our products and our services. It's been a busy year. I do have to pay credit to EDI who are now part of Pearson Learning and particularly Gary Tovey who's in the room. They have been absolutely superb partners in helping us develop our new diploma and you know if ever there was a model for how this sector should operate in partnership they absolutely lived that. But what have we done? We've rewritten a syllabus, applied for and secured sign off from our sector skills council for a diploma in optical retailing. So this is not a traditional apprenticeship that people have in their minds. This is very much about retail. It's a thriving sector but it's non-traditional and these are perhaps the industries that we need to be encouraging to get on board with the apprenticeship arena. We had to re-engineer the programme from residential block release to day release and we had to create five local satellite training centres which bizarrely today on the 6th of September we open our fifth so we now have our full cohort of training centres. I'm not sure it will go down in history as similar impact to the day the Mayflower set sail from Britain but it feels like a big day for us. We also have to recruit a team of professionally qualified dispensing opticians to manage those training centres and deliver the programme for us locally. We will take probably over 400 level 2 apprentices in the next year but through the satellite training centres we create the capacity to train probably around 600 people a year through a level 2 and level 3 programme and we've retained that commitment to both funded and non-funded learners. One of the things that we're really trying to do is shift away from just purely technical teaching to more about developing people and really developing those softer skills that really make a difference to our customers and how they describe the experience of dealing with our staff so a real kind of shifting the pendulum away from the overly technical into the more behavioural. I'm also delighted to say that Boots the Chemist will be entering the apprenticeship arena this year with 20 commercial apprenticeships at the support office in Nottingham and I think it's just a fantastic move to get an organisation of that size and scale into the apprenticeship arena. The other thing interesting that John alluded to around career pathways, quite bizarrely the guy who's going to run our Bristol Training Centre started life as an NVQ trainee at Dulledin Atreson so we've got quite a good case study there of the pupil indeed becoming the teacher and it just kind of reinforces the point that you can create these career pathways. So my insights around the programme are really that developing people through a formal apprenticeship programme has had some hugely positive impacts on the business key performance indicators both hard and soft both in terms of productivity but equally importantly what our customers tell us about the experience and how it feels for them in dealing with our colleagues. The second point about how our colleagues value the process should not be underestimated and I think we should all reflect on how we tell those stories to inspire other organisations to get on the pitch. The partnership with their awarding organisation is absolutely critical I think if that relationship is good that it creates a whole load of potential about how you can shift and really keep your programme relevant to the needs of a business and again we'll all be challenged by our finance departments in years to come and it does no harm to be able to demonstrate that our training development is nimble in meeting the needs of the business. The link to my old role is quite key. One of the things I'll learn when I was looking after professional recruitment and resourcing is no good just focusing on recruiting the new members and new colleagues to your organisation. You've got to keep an eye on the back door and retaining those that you already have and I think that the one thing I would say in welcoming the report from Elsis this morning is I think that not only does it create a platform for us to go out and encourage other businesses to come into the world of apprenticeships but actually I suspect that as pressures grow in the coming years the activity in there will also help us retain those businesses in the apprenticeship arena who are already in it and I think that's equally important. So my plea around this is really that we continue to on the simplification agenda. I think it's incumbent on all of us in the rooms to keep lobbying government, to keep driving that simplification agenda because it will undoubtedly get more people involved and grow that population. I think it's also incumbent that we work in partnership. It's very encouraging to hear John talk about that and I think we at stakeholders should absolutely work together in the future and we should be quite entrepreneurial about how we do this. We shouldn't be stuck in the traditional industries around apprenticeships. We can really, we've got a model and a framework here that could be quite adaptable and as I say we've got to focus on that retention. My encouragement to John for those of you that were in this room back in May when the CBI skills report was published, I've written down a few words that John said. He talked about the skills agenda being demand driven, recognise the value of softer skills, the business should drive the skills system. He was seeking a sea change reduction in admin and he used a great term of being off your back and on your side and I think in his response to the report this morning I have to say I believe that he's been true to those principles and I would just in my encouragement to BIS would be to keep pushing that agenda. My request to those of us in the room who are stakeholders in this is to see this report as the end of the beginning. John talked about beginnings and endings. I think we've got a foothold in the area that is most critical in terms of making apprenticeships more appealing to employers and we should only see it as the end of the beginning. I would ask us all in this room not to be advocates for the apprenticeship scheme. The challenge I give you ladies and gentlemen is can we be evangelists? Thank you very much.