__
Companies are planning the spending of their apprenticeship funding in anticipation of April’s levy. One avenue worth exploring is degree apprenticeships, and training providers can help your organisation test the waters. David Willett, head of propositions at the Open University, explains.
Yet if you continue to hold off, you could keep missing out on this valuable pool of talent and the positive impact they can bring. The fact is, if you work for a large employer with a wage bill of more than £3 million per annum, your organisation will have to pay upcoming apprenticeship levy, whether or not you have an apprenticeship programme in place.
One option is to run a pilot degree apprenticeship programme, as this will enable you to test, and subsequently demonstrate, the business impacts and also measure the return on investment. Here are some tips and advice to help your organisation set one up.
Apprenticeships are all about helping you to put the required skills in place to drive your organisation’s objectives – whether that’s improving performance, productivity and/or quality of service. They’re not just to meet the skills needs of today and tomorrow, but also to meet the requirements in years to come. Next, conduct a comprehensive skills audit to identify exactly the skills your current employees have, so you can examine where the gaps are against the organisational strategy.
Do you want to recruit new employees for the pilot, or are there suitable people in the organisation already?
There will be less additional work if you go down the existing staff route, and providing some of your bright prospects with real development opportunities can work as a great engagement and retention tool, as well as bring new skills to people who already have a lot of experience in the organisation. Whichever route you choose, training providers should be able to support you to run a small pilot programme with a recruitment service or to help you find the right people and bring them into your organisation.
There’s a Government website that lists, by occupational area, all the standards that have been approved and those that are in development. Each standard details the learning outcomes and skills apprentices will acquire, which you can then compare against your organisation’s identified skills needs.
A great apprenticeship programme needs solid input from line managers and mentors, providing your apprentices with appropriate, timely advice, guidance and support.
Particularly with younger apprentices, a good line manager or mentor can play a positive role: it’s not about being their parent or their guardian, it’s about managing them to get the best out of them in the workplace.
Ideally, you should put in place bespoke training that introduces line managers or mentors to their roles and responsibilities, and provides them with information about the programme the apprentice is studying.
A good apprenticeship training provider will be able to offer this training for your line managers and mentors, so make sure to ask the question.
Consider what will happen to the individuals at the end of their apprenticeships, regardless of whether they joined the apprenticeship programme as an existing employee or were recruited into the organisation specifically as an apprentice.
To help you find the right training provider for you, here are five questions to consider as part of the decision-making process:
If you’re interested in saving money by outsourcing your companies HR needs to professionals then please contact HPC on this website.
Link to full article on Personnel Today: http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/apprenticeship-levy-degree-apprenticeships-list/