The Importance of the new Apprenticeship Roadmap

The road to a quality apprenticeship has been released as a new guide. Its goal is to assist employers in comprehending the stages required in providing high-quality, successful apprenticeships in their organisations.

The guide provides employers with links to information and tools at various phases of an apprenticeship journey to assist them in ensuring a quality experience for their apprentices, thereby increasing retention, achievement, and, as a result, the returns that apprentices provide. The guide is a step-by-step guide for employers of all sizes. We can also utilise this to better understand the role of employers in the apprenticeship process.

Similar guides for end-point assessment organisations and trainees will follow the road to an excellent apprenticeship. They highlight the collaborative approach required in delivering apprenticeships, together with the provider guide to delivering high-quality apprenticeships.

What is the Apprenticeship Roadmap? 

• Apprenticeships helped 86 percent of employers build skills that were relevant to their business.
• Apprenticeships helped 78 percent of firms increase productivity.
• Apprenticeships assisted 74 percent of firms increase the quality of their product or service.

The Candidate

It is important to reach and recruit from the largest pool of candidates, whilst fully understand the commitment required to have an apprenticeship on board and comprehending any additional support needs.

The government offer support in recruiting from helping you create an apprenticeship service account, to helping you locate an apprenticeship training course and a training provider with the help of find apprenticeship training as well as supporting you recruiting an apprentice to establish your own apprenticeship opportunity. They will also post your apprenticeship position on find an apprenticeship if you make one.

You have control over the recruiting process through out and for more information here.

Funding and Employer Responsibilities

Understanding what funding is available to employers and knowing what are the responsibilities when employing an apprentice is really important to everyone involved.

The government may be able to assist you in paying for apprenticeship training. Whether or not you pay the apprenticeship levy determines the amount you receive. If you have a pay bill of less than £3 million per year, you will need to contribute 5% to the cost of the apprenticeship with the remaining 95% being funded by the government. To find out more, refer to here which covers England and rest of the UK through the links shown.

The Job

Any job within your organisation needs to be fully planned in and supported. You need to ensure that your apprentice can spend at least 20% of their time as off-the-job training.

Your apprentice will receive two sorts of training during their apprenticeship. During your apprentice's usual working hours, a training provider provides "off-the-job" instruction. This programme will teach your apprentice the knowledge, skills, and behaviours required to acquire occupational competence as outlined in the apprenticeship standard. 

You, as the employer, will provide ‘on-the-job' training. To help your apprentice accomplish the task you've recruited them for, you'll need to provide training and supervision.

Training and Assessment Provider

You need to find the right training provider that you feel confident in working with. It is critical to select a training provider that is appropriate for your company. You need to consider how well they communicate about the training with you, what other companies have to say about them and what their apprentices have to say about them. 

You will need to negotiate on the price of the apprenticeship with them and ensure that you carry out an initial assessment prior to learning commencement.

Commitment Statement

Employer must sign a commitment statement with their apprentice and training provider before they begin their learning and training. The following items must be included in the commitment statement:

• the planned content and schedule for training
• what is expected and offered by the employer, the training provider and the apprentice
• how to resolve queries or complaints

Mentoring and Training

Two of the main questions that need addressing on this roadmap about Mentoring and Training are:-

• Have you noted and tracked apprentice development throughout the process to ensure they are on track?
• Is your apprentice receiving the right career guidance, mentoring and learner support to ensure success?

Mentoring and Training are so important to your organisation and you need to find the right training provider who will preferably work in line with your strategies, priorities and fulfil your main requirements. The best providers will work in partnership with employers to ensure the programmes we deliver to their staff are tailored to meet their requirements. 

End Point Assessment

End-point assessment (EPA) is a test of your apprentice's knowledge, abilities, and behaviours over the course of their apprenticeship, confirming that they are occupationally competent.

Employers in the sector created the assessments, which are carried out by independent agencies known as end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs).

Celebration

Many organisations consider joining the Apprenticeship Ambassador Network. Through their own employees, they show a strong commitment to apprenticeships and/or traineeships. They have a strong profile in their industry or region, and they represent a wide range of occupations.

Moreover, every year the Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers are announced and your business can also enter the National Apprenticeship Awards.

Progression

Once the apprenticeship is over, you need to consider what happens next and what merits come from completing their apprenticeship, this might be a promotion, a higher income, or the opportunity to specialise further in their chosen subject to enhance their career further.

According to a new McKinsey survey of 100 executives* from various industries and across different locations, nine out of ten firms will combine remote and on-site working in the post-pandemic future of work. During the epidemic, production and consumer satisfaction have both concurrently increased, according to the report.

In light of this news, Microsoft is working on a new version of Outlook, its email service, in anticipation of the broad adoption of hybrid working, in which people split their time between home and work. A new MS Outlook feature will ensure staff can collaborate across different working environments. Every day, it seems, a major corporation makes a new announcement about its ‘future of work' plan, and experts seem to agree that hybrid is the way to go.

At Ascento, we have embraced remote working and now we’re moving towards hybrid working when required. Many companies and their teams have spent months analysing policies and strategising on how and, more critically, where the workforce might resume some kind of normalcy following the pandemic.

So to help you and our client base, we’ve put together 10 tips on how to make hybrid working work for you, so here goes:-

So to help you and our client base, we’ve put together 10 tips on how to make hybrid working work for you, so here goes:-

1. One to one sessions - To begin with, schedule one-on-one sessions with your personnel in order to better understand their requirements. While some people benefited from the flexibility of working from home, others might require face-to-face interaction in the workplace.
2. HR policies - Ensure you communicate clearly with your employees or partners. Communicate your expectations and develop HR policies to clarify how and where your employees could work, and established flexible working hours, all while ensuring that employees were held accountable at specific times.
3. Technology that serves - Put money into the right technology to ensure employees have more autonomy, whilst bridging the physical and digital worlds so they can work efficiently no matter where they are.
4. Virtual and the physical - On an office-by-office basis, tailor your policies to the wants and needs of our employees. We now have a full understanding of remote working, virtual gatherings and online meetings. Now is the time to consider flexible practices and solutions that can work for teams and collaboratively within companies moving forward.
5. Personal development no matter what - Continue to train staff no matter where they work the most ‘hybrid wise’, this is in light of a survey by Lane4 consultancy* suggesting that almost three in 10 employees received no training to support their professional development while working in a hybrid environment.
6. Treat everyone right - Consciously remember staff who work remotely within your business structures and practises, since the Office for National Statistics suggested employees who worked predominantly from home were less likely to receive bonuses or pay rises.
7. Flexibility matters - Try to think differently or outside of the box as physical space and remote interactions will continue to play a significant and relevant role in our workplace culture, thus for the time being, a model that gives individuals more flexibility in where they work is likely to be the best option. It is also critical that businesses alter their workplace environment to make it a place where people can collaborate rather than just work for the sake of working.
8. Cyber proofing - As a matter of urgency, business leaders must examine corporate resilience and cybersecurity initiatives. It is critical that they consult their personnel. According to IBM, 'human mistake' is responsible for 95% of successful cyber-attacks. Ensure this process is consultative to strengthen working relationships with staff, thus meaning less costly mistakes happen in future.
9. Customers needs and wants - If you work in B2C, try to evolve everything as leaders must think more like customers and assess if current products and services are satisfying changing demands and expectations.
10. Survey your staff - Ensure that you field the opinions of your staff via employee opinion surveys and digital focus groups to understand how our people are feeling, what matters most to them and what support they may need. This means you are always in touch with how people are feeling and you can work quickly to resolve anything that arises.

According to Personnel Today, the number of employees reporting mental health worries is up 24% since May 2020, research has revealed from Mental Health Awareness Week.

I qualified as a Mental Health First Aider in July 2019 and the course had a profound affect on me. The Mental Health First Aid course is designed to provide employees and managers with the expertise and confidence to recognise symptoms of mental illness in the workplace. It teaches them how to help workers who are struggling with these problems enabling them to seek assistance.

The main outcomes of the course are to ensure you have:-

• a thorough understanding of mental health and the factors that influence it
• practical knowledge of the causes and symptoms of a variety of mental illnesses
• confidence to step in, reassure and support a person in distress using the mental health first aid action plan
• enhanced interpersonal skills such as non-judgemental listening
• knowledge to help someone recover their health by guiding them to further support - whether through self-help resources, internal support such as EAP, or external sources such as their GP
• an understanding of how to keep themselves safe while performing their duties
• a quick reference card for the mental health first aid action plan

'A Plan for Jobs’ Extended

Following on from the recent Government Budget 2021, it was announced that extra money was available for the apprentice cohort from April 2021 onwards on top of the total package of support amounting to £30 billion made last year. As part of the economic response to coronavirus, the government launched ‘A Plan for Jobs’ and subsequently, this has been extended out with further incentives for employers also.

As we have seen in our working lives, the pandemic has accelerated the switch to Digital by 4-6 years as noted by the European Investment Fund (EIF) and remote working “Zoom like” meetings are now the new-norm.

With Digital and Management skill gaps being discussed in many media forums, now is the time to take a look at apprenticeships that are vocationally aligned with industry and their employees, to positively impact job roles and workplaces in the UK.

The hard work of leaders, tutors and staff at Ascento Learning and Development has been recognised within a recent report following on from our recent progress monitoring visit from Ofsted.

One of the biggest adaptations organisations have had to make as a result of Covid-19 is the mass migration of staff from the workplace to their homes. In April this year, figures show that 46.6% of the employed population did some work from home and that 86% of those did so as a result of Covid-19.

The graphs below illustrate how this is broken down via region and age group.

As we find ourselves in the middle of the second national lockdown in 8 months and with countless industries and whole sectors being on the brink of collapse, the subject of training and developing staff is understandably not at the top of anybody’s to do list at this juncture.

1. Have a dedicated workspace

I have left my November Blog contribution until now as we look forward to the new democratically elected US president and look forward to the possible impact that a more outward-facing America will bring to the world economy and stability. At least now we can look forward to a period of increasing certainty and confidence. Whilst writing this I am also pondering the uncertainty that the latest COVID 19 lockdown is having and will continue to have on us all. Economically the Bank of England figures estimate an 11% contraction to the economy in Q4 compared to the same Q4 last year. In economic terms, the percentage is enormous and certainly, whilst not a ‘Crash’ level definition is unsustainable. The bank has pumped into the economy (Quantitative Easing) an additional £32,000 per household during 2020. An unbelievable figure, that will ultimately mean the amount of money the UK Government is borrowing, especially, now that the furlough scheme has been extended to March 2021 will be way past 100% of Gross Domestic Product.