How a Project Management Apprentice Became Leeds Building Society's Most Inspirational Newcomer

Millie Andrews has been in her project management apprenticeship for just over a year. In that time, she has redesigned a business-critical tracking framework, led stakeholder sessions for major project closures, and beaten the entire company's new starter cohort to win the Inspirational Newcomer Award. She is 12 months into her career. This is what a good apprenticeship looks like.  

Her story is a straight-forward answer to a question many employers ask: is an apprenticeship worth it? For Leeds Building Society, the answer has been a clear yes. Here's what happened.  

Background  

The right hire at the right moment 

Millie came to the apprenticeship as a law graduate who had also spent time in events planning, building skills in organisation, leadership, and stakeholder management. She wasn't a blank slate. She was someone with real capability looking for the right environment to develop it.  

That's precisely what an apprenticeship offers employers: the chance to bring in motivated, capable people and shape their development from the start. Millie chose the programme because it matched her skills and genuinely interested her. That combination of fit and enthusiasm, she says, made all the difference.  

Employers who hire apprentices with a genuine role fit get someone who shows up motivated from day one; not just fulfilling a placement, but building a career.  

Development  

Faster to contribute, quicker to grow  

One of the practical benefits Leeds Building Society have noticed early on is how quickly she started contributing meaningfully in meetings. Because her masterclass learning ran alongside her day job, she could apply theory in real time; recognising frameworks in meetings, contributing meaningfully to discussions, and picking up new skills faster than a more traditional hire might.  

"I can sit in a meeting, recognise what's being discussed because I've studied it, and actually put my hand up and contribute something meaningful," she says. That's not just good for Millie. That's good for every team she works with.  

The apprenticeship structure also gave her the confidence to ask for more challenging work, even beyond her usual remit. She could approach colleagues directly and ask to shadow a piece of work, join a session, or take on a small part of a project. For employers, this means an apprentice who self-directs their own development rather than waiting to be told what to do next.  

"You can say, my apprenticeship covers this area — could I shadow this? Could I have a go at that? That opportunity to try things without pressure has been massively beneficial."  

Real-world impact  

Delivering work that actually mattered  

Within her first year, Millie led a ‘lessons learned’ session at the close of a major project. She owned it from start to finish: stakeholder survey, anonymised feedback, presentation, and facilitation across both in-person and remote attendees. The format was deliberately designed to give quieter voices room to be heard.  

This is not busywork. This is exactly the kind of structured, stakeholder-facing work that employers need doing well. And Millie did it well because her apprenticeship training had given her the foundations to walk in prepared.  

"I walked into that room knowing what the stakeholders needed, how to interact with them, and how to really show up," she says. "That was one of the moments I thought: yes, this is actually helping my career, not just my learning."  

Award-winning work  

She spotted a problem. Then she fixed it.  

Perhaps the most telling sign of Millie's contributions came when she noticed something wasn't working and tried to fix it. The business's guidance around objectives and key results wasn't keeping pace with the team's more agile ways of working. Nobody had asked her to fix it. She decided to do it anyway.  

She approached a business analyst colleague, made her case, and proposed a project to relaunch the framework. Together they rewrote the principles and built a new tracker that gave teams much clearer visibility of their progress across long-running projects. Senior stakeholders backed it. Teams adopted it. It's still in use and still evolving.  

That kind of proactive, cross-functional problem-solving is exactly what organisations need — and exactly what a well-supported apprentice is capable of delivering.  

The Inspirational Newcomer Award followed. It's open to anyone who joined in the last 16 months, across the whole business, and Millie won it. "It made me realise I have more potential than I thought," she says. For Leeds Building Society, it confirmed what they likely already suspected.  

 Millie's advice to anyone considering an apprenticeship  

"Definitely do it. It lets you jump straight into your career with a safety net — nobody expects you to know everything. There's no pressure to be an expert on day one, and that gives you the space to build your personal brand properly. But don't just pick one that sounds impressive. Pick one that sounds enjoyable, because you need to show up every day and love what you're doing."  

The bottom line  

What Millie's story tells employers  

In just over a year, Leeds Building Society gained someone who improved a core business process, led real stakeholder work, developed rapidly without requiring intensive management, and won a company-wide award. That's a strong return on an apprenticeship investment by any measure.  

Millie's success wasn't accidental. It came from a combination of the right person, the right role, and the right support. That's something any employer can replicate — with the right apprenticeship partner.  

Interested in hiring an apprentice? Get in touch to find out how we can help you build your team.