Part Two - Earning while learning
Last time we looked at recruiting at the top of the age range, so it’s only logical we’d be looking at newcomers to the working world in general, in particular apprentices.
The first we heard of apprenticeships was in Egypt and Babylon 4,000 years ago, when the focus was on practical skills as opposed to theoretical knowledge.
In the Middle Ages apprentices received hands-on training that started when they were very young and which went on for seven years or more, under the supervision of a skilled master of the trade.
Nowadays “apprenticeship” can be categorised into different levels: the Intermediate Apprenticeship (Level 2) is the equivalent to five good GCSE passes and is the stepping stone towards a Level 3 Advanced Apprenticeship, which can last between two and four years.
A Higher Apprenticeship at Levels 4 and 5 for students aged 18 and over is the equivalent to a Foundation Degree, while a Degree Apprenticeship at Levels 5 and 6 sees the student graduating from an accredited university with a Batchelor’s degree and a Level 7 Masters is a postgraduate-level program, second only to a doctorate in the academic hierarchy.
To increase the number of UK apprenticeships on offer, the National Apprenticeship Levy was proposed in 2016 as an incentive for employers to invest in training apprentices.
Funds collected through that levy were redistributed to the tune of £15,000 for each employer to invest.
The scheme was a good idea in theory, as it allowed those with a preference for learning 'on the job' to develop their skills through experience, as opposed to the purely academic route of A-levels to degree to a graduate role.
In practice, though, it didn't work as well as hoped. Reasons included its basic complexity, the form-filling and accompanying bureaucracy, the restrictions on how funding could be used, and the dubious quality of some of those apprenticeship programs.
There was also the sneaky shift of existing training programs into "apprenticeships" in order to take advantage of what could have been thought of as "free money".
Of course, it wasn't free money for everybody - employers with an annual pay bill exceeding £3 million were required to contribute 0.5% of that gross pay bill.
But each employer did receive a £15,000 allowance to finance their apprenticeship training and assessment costs.
But could an apprenticeship levy program solve today’s recruitment crisis?
One aspect that would definitely need looking into is that of remuneration: the UK’s statutory apprenticeship pay rate is currently set at two levels, one for apprentices under 19 or in their first year - that’s £6.40/hour.
For apprentices aged 19 and over, or who’ve completed the first year of their apprenticeship their hourly wage works at £11.44/hour.
And this is where things get less than straightforward, since the UK’s National Living Wage for those aged 21 and over coincidentally happens to be £11.44/hour – whether someone’s training for a specific career like, say, a nursery nurse … or just working at something that doesn’t require much – if anything – in the way of training, perhaps as a retail assistant or fast food worker.
So what’s less than straightforward about that?
For the average nursery nurse after completing a Level 3 apprenticeship taking around 18 months, the salary according to indeed.com works out to just 9p over the minimum wage, at £11.53/hour – perhaps begging the question “why bother?” and very possibly explaining the dearth of trained nursery nurses.
So one solution would be to properly reward people’s investment in all that training, rather than trying to get away with keeping pay down to the barest of bare minimums.
Another solution would be to adopt a more European attitude towards apprenticeships when comparing them to a university education (this is neither the time nor the place to discuss those Mickey Mouse degrees).
In Western and Central Europe, for example, apprenticeships are seen as a practical pathway to well-paying work, while in Eastern Europe the recognition is definitely growing that apprenticeships can and do offer a more direct path to employment.
For now, though, here in the UK taking on apprentices is still very much the long game, providing more extensive career opportunities for them – when the time comes.
But the problem is how to make apprenticeships more appealing not just to apprentices themselves, but also very much to the companies that could be offering them?
To that extent, before their election victory Labour had developed plans which included giving businesses more flexibility over how they could spend government money allocated for apprenticeships, and offering pre-apprenticeship training to prepare individuals for full apprenticeships.
It is, of course, early days yet, so we’ll have to see whether those plans actually come to fruition. And when or if they do, we’ll find out how well they’ll work.
So we’ve now looked at recruitment at both ends of the age scale, and in our next and final part we’ll be talking about recruiting people of all ages – and how to make sure they’re exactly the right fit.
Watch this space …
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