Business Admin Apprenticeship Spotlight

Spotlight on: Business Administration Apprentice Jessica Fellows

We recently chatted to Jess and her assessor Sue about her experience with her apprenticeship and to find out more about her End Point Assessment (EPA).

Jess successfully achieved both her Level 2 (2018/2019) and Level 3 Business Administration (2021/2022) apprenticeship qualifications with us and was selected as Apprentice of the Year at this year’s college awards evening.

During her apprenticeship Jess was working at Working Environments in Southampton, a building services contractor, as Secretary to the Group Commercial Director. As an overview her day-to-day role entailed updating spreadsheets, managing supply chain payments, administration of sales applications, managing the commercial and surveying Outlook calendars, booking hotels for colleagues and procuring refreshments for fortnightly meetings. 

She won our Apprentice of the Year award for her continued commitment to her learning and maintaining a high level of professional standards in everything she does. About winning the award she shared: “I was gobsmacked to be awarded Apprentice of the Year, the best bit was my dad being so proud of me that he cried.”

Sue, her assessor, was keen to highlight that colleagues will regularly go to Jess for coaching and she was even asked to develop new methods of training for new starters to better help support teams. Her innovative solution to this was to use Microsoft Teams to record and voice-over a demonstration of how to process sales applications, invoices and sub-contractor payments on a bespoke system.

For her End Point Assessment (EPA), Jess had to manage a project. For this, she chose to organise a Charity Bake-off Event to raise money for the Stroke Association, a cause close to her and other colleagues at Working Environments.

Leading this project gave her a host of extra knowledge and skills such as planning and organising projects using Gantt charts, milestones and budgets, communicating with stakeholders and managing external factors that could potentially impact the project.

As a direct result of her successfully leading and managing this project, she has organised other successful charity events within her organisation. Her EPA event also impressed her organisation’s Chief Executive so much that he invited her to take up the responsibility of managing the Group’s Charity Foundation. 

We are proud to share that since completing her apprenticeship Jess has taken up the position of Senior Administrator at J&B Hopkins Ltd.