John Deere wins £5,000 edge employer award

Nottingham-based John Deere has been awarded £5,000 after being crowned the East Midlands' best medium sized employer for practical learning.

John Deere was awarded the honour after winning the regional heats of the Edge Employer Award; a joint Jamie Oliver and Simon Woodroffe-backed initiative to recognise the best employers in England offering practical learning opportunities to 14-25 year-olds.

Having already beaten hundreds of organisations, John Deere will now go head-to-head with eight other medium sized organisations for the chance to be recognised as the country's best practical learning employer and receive a staggering £50,000 investment.

Peter Leech, Manager of Customer Support at John Deere, was thrilled with the news, saying: "We are delighted to have won an Edge Employer Award. Practical learning is crucial to the development of our dealer apprentices and we have developed a work based learning programme with Brooksby Melton College. A very important ingredient of this programme is that apprentices work with and continually learn from experienced technicians in the dealer's workplace."

John Deere Limited has been providing comprehensive service technician training across the UK and Ireland dealer network as an integral part of the business since the company started trading in 1966. The dealer network has hired an average of 30 apprentices a year during that time, all of whom have benefited from John Deere training. The Ag Tech agricultural apprentice engineer training programme was the first such scheme to be introduced in the UK, in 1992. Since then, 177 Ag and Turf Tech apprentices have qualified through the scheme, and the programme's total intake to date has been a staggering 361.

Simon Woodroffe, Edge supporter and Founder of Yo! Sushi, says: "Congratulations to John Deere for winning an Edge Employer Award. Most people really discover what they love and what they're good at by actually doing it. It is great that John Deere is committed to giving young people these opportunities."

Jamie Oliver, a supporter of the Edge Employer Awards, says: "The Edge Employer Awards is a brilliant competition and the winning organisations are doing an outstanding job, I hope other organisations will be inspired to follow in their footsteps."

All regional winners will receive their trophy and prize at the Edge Employer Awards ceremony at Old Billingsgate, in London, 1 November, at which the four national winners are to be announced. Jamie Oliver and Simon Woodroffe will both attend the ceremony.