Luxury automotive company Rolls-Royce Motors celebrates its successful apprenticeship programme as an essential component of efforts to build up the skilled workforce it will need in the future.

High-end automotive company Rolls-Royce Motor Cars celebrated its apprenticeship programme at a special event in mid-February. It organised the gathering, at its global headquarters and centre of luxury manufacturing excellence at Goodwood in the south of England, as part of the UK’s national apprenticeship week. Former and current employees attended, including many who have come through the in-house apprenticeship programme that the company launched in 2006. Local member of parliament, Jess Brown-Fuller, was also among the guests.

More than 2,500 people work at the Goodwood site at the moment, including 95 who are part of the current apprenticeship intake. A further 133 members of the workforce at the moment are graduates of the in-house programme; some of them are now in supervisory or management-level roles. Alumni from the programme have also been able to use the skills and experience they gained at Rolls-Royce Motors to pursue opportunities in other industries and settings.

Former apprentices have now set up their own networking group, through which they will aim to make connections and friendships across and outside the business. They aim to use this to support each other in their everyday work and career development. They will also act as mentors to new recruits joining the programme. The window for applications for the 2025 apprenticeship programme is open until March 31. Rolls-Royce Motors says it welcomes applications from young people with a wide range of prior experience, interests and educational backgrounds. Successful applicants will begin their training in August.

Workforce of the future

It can take trainees between two and four years to complete apprenticeships at Rolls-Royce Motors. During this time, recruits can work in a range of specialisms alongside experienced craftspeople. This includes working in the company’s leathershop, as well as in its assembly, woodshop and other departments. Important educational opportunities at local colleges and universities go hand in hand with this; through these, the apprentices can earn technical, vocational and degree qualifications.

Director of human resources at Rolls-Royce Motors, Mark Adams, is in no doubt about the importance of the programme to the company. He says apprenticeships play a vital role in developing the skilled workforce it will need in the future. “The combination of hands-on training, work experience and nationally recognised qualifications provides a fantastic pathway to a fulfilling career for young people seeking alternatives to conventional further and higher education,“ he explains.

He adds that an important aim of the February event was to recognise “the immense contribution” of former apprentices, who have gone on to become “leaders, innovators and role models here”. Fostering connections, building networks and exchanging ideas, which the alumni group will seek to do, are initiatives that the apprentices themselves wanted to launch. Mr Adams says he looks forward to seeing the network grow and develop.

Inspired by young women

For Mrs Brown-Fuller, impressive aspects of the national apprenticeship week event included insight into the wide range of career opportunities on offer at Rolls-Royce for young people who prefer not to go straight to university after school. “It was wonderful to be part of the celebration,” the politician says. She adds that she was impressed by the numbers of young women who are part of the programme at the moment, or have already completed it. Young women exploring a career in manufacturing, with the support and mentoring of other women “particularly inspired” her.

The Goodwood facility is the only factory in the world that makes Rolls-Royce cars and all the vehicles it produces are “meticulously built by hand”, the company states. A single vehicle can use nine full-size hides’ worth of leather in its construction, which means knowledge of and expertise in working with leather is a key part of the operation. This is why leather is also part of the apprenticeship programme. 

Perforations make a picture

A recent example of the high levels of expertise in the leathershop at Goodwood came to light last year when the company shared details of a new technique for creating artwork in car interiors using tiny perforations in the leather. Then, at the start of this year, in an in-house series of videos called The Voice of the Maker, through which it aims to showcase the savoir-faire of its workforce, Rolls-Royce Motors gave a deeper insight into this project. Its leather specialists developed the new craft technique that makes it possible.

Perforations have been a feature of automotive leather for many years. Original equipment manufacturers, including Rolls-Royce, had previously placed perforations in leather for functional reasons, most obviously increased breathability. Until now, when they have been used for aesthetic reasons, it has nearly always been in what the company’s product design team describes as “a very geometrical alignment” to give a sporty look.

In this special project, though, the launch of the Cullinan Series II super-luxury SUV, the perforations have a more important artistic role to play. They offer a representation of the cloud patterns that the company says are often visible in the skies over Goodwood. “We wanted to go in a more emotional direction and tell a story through our design,” the team says.

To do so, designers have used two different sizes of perforations, smaller ones with a diameter of 0.8 millimetres and larger ones of 1.2 millimetres. These have to go into 46 different pieces of leather per vehicle interior, and they have to go into each piece in exactly the right position because the technicians in the leathershop place the leather around each part manually.

The team talks of these perforations as being “like little jewels” and reveals that it has to put more than 100,000 of them into the interior of each car. Most of these go into the leather on the seats, but there are also some on other elements, such as door-handles, speakers and the picnic tables that are one of the features in the Cullinan’s rear cabin. Each tiny detail makes a contribution to the whole.

Perforation perfection. The interior of the Cullinan Series II super-luxury SUV, which uses perforations in 46 different pieces of leather to create art and tell a story.
All credits: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

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