The need is high for specific employable skills in the workplace. Attracting and acquiring new talent to all industries is a competitive field, with more students leaving school and attending university than ever before.
However, for growing businesses, the benefits of apprenticeships are becoming apparent. The ability to train your staff and integrate them into a working culture has its obvious advantages. But the reasons for creating on-the-job training courses for new talent are increasing every day. Here we look at how businesses are benefiting from apprentices, and how they can grow in the future.
Growing skills and businesses
Apprenticeships are one of the best opportunities for young people to learn valuable workplace-related skills. Where once the idea of apprenticeships was saturated by jobs in sectors such as engineering, construction and care, a growing number of courses now compete with higher-level education and degree-level careers.
The U.K. government introduced an apprenticeships levy in 2017, forcing businesses with payrolls of more than £3 million to reserve 5 percent of wage costs for training in the workplace. The levy was expected to create 3 million more apprenticeships in the U.K. by 2020.
It is essential for large businesses to generate highly skilled employees from apprenticeships. This is demonstrated by the growth of high-level apprenticeships over the past five years. A Level 7 Apprenticeship is considered equivalent to a post-graduate course. A 2019 report found that only 30 people enrolled at this level in 2015, compared with 4,500 people in 2017 when the levy was introduced.
The growing number of high-level apprenticeships is reflected in the variety of roles available to those who want to learn in the workplace. Some examples include apprenticeships in aerospace engineering with the Ministry of Defence, digital marketing and as a police constable. The U.K.’s Universities and Colleges Admissions Service advertises apprenticeships that pay £30,000 a year, more than 25 percent more than the average graduate salary in the U.K.
A day in the life
Apprenticeships are not just an alternative to further or even higher education. Courses often contain useful skills that act as introductory workshops into specific sectors.
Grace, for example, started an apprenticeship in digital marketing in July 2019 with Mobile Mini, a storage container provider and rental service. She explains why an apprenticeship course appealed to her: “I chose to do this rather than going to university because I wanted to continue in education at the same time as learning on the job.”
For Grace, being able to work while earning had obvious advantages. But most important, she believes it will benefit her career in the long run. She continues, “An apprenticeship really prepares you for the world of work, as you are not only continuing education, you are also gaining so much valuable experience of a real workplace.”
This reflects the growing need for sector-specific skills over generalized skills, particularly in digital and high-skilled roles. For businesses, the prospect of molding the ideal worker through work and education creates the perfect employee, ingrained within the culture of the company.
Beyond 2021
While apprenticeships are becoming increasingly prevalent in workplaces, the future will depend on them. The World Economic Forum noted that changing technology and business practices will mean that up to 42 percent of skill requirements will change by 2022. Consequently, reskilling is becoming not only necessary but difficult to do on a large scale as well.
The turnover of essential skills means they can only be learned in the workplace, and often, if practical skills are taught in higher education, there is an expectation that they will be redundant by the time a student enters the workforce.
Only through apprenticeships can a business move within the era of accelerated and digital innovation. With young people ingrained in a culture of digitization, they will adapt to changing scenarios and technology. Businesses will compete for talent from a pool of young apprentices. As the number of apprentices increases, opportunities must adapt to meet the needs of an intelligent workforce, where education occurs throughout their working lives.
As apprenticeships become more common and attractive for both students and businesses, are we likely to see a shift in post-school education? With the cost of university becoming an unattractive prospect for young people, will apprenticeships become the best way to prepare people for a working future? Only time will tell, but the benefits are evident.
