Top Accountancy Firm’s Youth Employment Initiatives Attracts Visit from Minister for Youth and Women’s Employment

Anderson Anderson & Brown LLP (AAB), one of the leading independent firms of Chartered Accountants, welcomed Annabelle Ewing, the Minister for Youth and Women’s Employment, to their office in Aberdeen yesterday.

On her visit to AAB, Ms Ewing was taken on a tour of the office to meet a number of young people working in the different service and support teams across the firm. AAB participates in a number of youth employment initiatives and Ms Ewing met individuals undertaking various training programmes. AAB has also recently pledged their support to the P&J’s Apprentice 100 Campaign pledging to recruit at least one more young person this year.

Ms Ewing ended her visit by presenting the Investors in Young People Gold Award to AAB’s most recent apprentice working in their Internal Finance team, Laura Tan, and Jade Anderson, who started at AAB as an Office Junior when she was 17 and is now the firm’s Assistant Finance Manager, responsible for the training and development of her own apprentice, Laura.

Annabelle Ewing, Minister for Youth and Women’s Employment, said: “I am very pleased to present AAB with their Investors in Young People Gold award. The staff here have shown that they can offer opportunities to enter the company at different levels – through work experience, placements, internships, from school or through a graduate scheme. That is a testament to the talent in place here to train the workforce, but also an appreciation of the value of having the in house expertise to develop careers and gain professional qualifications. The variety of work done by the company and the number of awards it has won shows that this approach is certainly paying off.”

Karen Stewart, Chief Human Resources Officer at AAB commented, “We were delighted to welcome Annabelle Ewing to our office and to be given the opportunity to showcase our very talented team. We are incredibly proud of our young people and the various training programmes which we offer to enable them to build a fulfilling and progressive professional career with us and really do see this area of our recruitment initiatives as a significant one which will create the leaders of our future. This year has been fantastic for our youth employment initiatives and activities at AAB as we have recruited a record number of young people with 20 graduates, placement students and school leavers joining our firm and undertaking our various training programmes. Achieving the Investors in Young People Gold Award and inviting Ms Ewing to visit us has really cemented the recognition which we have achieved for our commitment to training and developing young people. We would like to thank Ms Ewing for taking the time to visit AAB to find out more about our firm and our incredible young people.”

The Minister for Youth and Women’s Employment’s interest in visiting AAB stemmed from the firm’s commitment to introducing young people to the world of work and giving them the opportunity to develop their careers, which she was made aware of when AAB were awarded the Investors in Young People Good Practice Award earlier this year, since then AAB became the first accountancy firm in Scotland to achieve the Investors in Young People Gold Award – the highest people management standard that focuses on an employer’s recruitment and retention of young people.

AAB have over 250 people working in specialised teams across 25 different service lines, all focused on working in partnership with clients to understand their ambitions and to help deliver them.

Pictured below is Annabelle Ewing presenting the Investors in Young People Gold Award to Jade Anderson and Laura Tan of AAB, and a number of other photos from Annabelle’s visit yesterday.