Locks and Security News: your weekly locks and security industry newsletter
10th April 2024 Issue no. 700

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Announcing the Golden Key Award

Do you have a trainee or apprentice working and learning with you who is truly exceptional?

Or have they perhaps had to rise to overcome a physical or social disability or other life disadvantage in order to get to a position where they are now learning their locksmithing skills from you or your company?

If so, the Golden Key Award is for them! And for you.

Sponsored by Lockdecoders, the well-known technology innovator for the auto locksmith sector, the Golden key Award is open to anyone under the age of 25 who is currently working as a trainee or apprentice locksmith. It is open to both traditional and auto locksmith trainees.

The purpose of the Golden Key Award is to honour those with inherent talents or natural born skills, as well as those who diligently apply themselves to the hard work of learning, so literally anyone with the 'right stuff' may equally be considered.

In addition to the prestige of receiving such an award, together with the advantage of all the associated publicity for both employer and trainee, there will also be a financial reward of £500. This will be shared £300 to the trainee and £200 for the employer by way of compensation for submitting the entry and allowing any subsequent worker disruption during the evaluation.

After submission of entrants names and details, accompanied by any relevant personal 'story' the industry itself will get the chance to pick the shortlist of recommended trainees via the Locks & Security website.

From those names the final selection will be made by a panel of three judges: Peter Southern from the award sponsor Lockdecoders; Mick Friend, Editor of Locks & Security Magazine; and Ron Cliff, an independent with many years experience as a working locksmith and trainer.

The presentation of the award will be at the annual Locksmiths' Exhibition held in Nottingham, during March 2013.

Entering the Golden Key Award puts a spotlight on your company and your trainee and as well as being an acknowledgement from your peers it is likely to have only positive results in terms of the young person's future employment prospects.

According to Lockdecoders' Peter Southern:

"Locksmithing requires the acquisition of a number of skill sets. Many of these skills can only be learned the hard way, through a continuing process of trial and error until a raft of experience has been built up. "Increasingly these days, additional skills must also be factored in, especially in the field of auto locksmithing where sophisticated diagnostics and computer encoding are typically employed alongside the more traditional copying and key cutting skills.

"It is our belief that all this hard work - in face of temptation from the easier route of merely attending 2 or 3 day 'locksmith' training courses - deserves to be acknowledged and rewarded, and for this reason we have inaugurated the Golden Key Award."

There will be two versions made of the Golden Key Award itself. One will be for presentation purposes and a slightly smaller version will be given to the lucky award winner to keep and treasure forever.

All entries in the first instance should be sent to [email protected] and must include the trainees name and age and as much information about him or her as you think we'll need in order to make an initial assessment.

The first list of entrants will be published in Locks & Security Magazine and repeated in the weekly e-zine.

20th June 2012