Skip to main content
Phil Smith

Phil Smith

Chair of Skills England; former CEO and Chairman of Cisco UK & Ireland, CBE.

Sep 11, 2026

16:37
that
16:37
many.
16:38
I mean, I did a degree in microbiology, ended up in technology and, you know, ended up running a company and whatever.
16:45
So, you know, it's one of those things where I think it is quite difficult at that age to determine exactly what you want.
16:52
And I think having sounds like an incredibly supportive employer is powerful.
16:56
But if you were looking back at yourself now, I mean, obviously you came from a particularly challenging time to COVID and so on.
17:02
But a young person now, what would you kind of tell them to do? Would you say just go and look at apprentices, jump in? What's your kind of sense of it really?

6 MINS LATER

22:52
Exploring, you know, holding the hangrail, being taught by loads of different people, hearing experiences from people around you can change that.
12:42
Yeah, we have that, but we have sort of pepper pot sites spread out it's very difficult getting those apprentices to those sites because invariably when they start with us they don't have transport they don't have vehicles we looked at solutions for example we purchased two minibuses and our mentors would meet them in sensory locations and take them but sometimes that doesn't it causes problems in terms of getting there getting back so yeah that's a challenge
13:12
that's an interesting one because it is something we hear quite a lot about They kind of joined up nature.
13:17
You know, if you're in a city, it's slightly better because there is transport buses and so on.
13:21
If you're in the countryside, you know, these young people just can't, the chances of them getting to these things are pretty sudden.
13:27
So joining up, you know, some people doing free bus passes and all that sort of stuff to try and get people.
13:32
It's interesting.
13:33
Yeah.
17:47
We do have long-term people in the company who have started with us at Schreiber.

We value your privacy

We use cookies to understand how you use our platform and to improve your experience. Click “Accept All” to consent, or “Decline non-essential” to opt out of non-essential cookies. Read our Privacy Policy.