Taking on an apprentice is a long term training and development investment, so it is vital to dedicate the time up front to develop a well considered plan for supporting your apprentice and ensuring that the business will benefit from the investment.
Here are our recommended 7 steps to getting yourself apprenticeship ready:
Where does the business need to be in the next one, five, ten years and what skills does it need to get there?
What skills does your company already possess through its employees? You should map current skills and existing employee progression pathways so that you can identify immediate and future skills gaps.
What is the best way to fill the identified skills gaps? Should they be filled by existing staff or will you need to bring in new employees? What training methods are most suitable to support employees in developing the required skills? This is where you will identify where apprenticeships can be used to enhance your company’s longer term skills base.
The Apprenticeship Standards Search Tool allows you to view the requirements of all available and upcoming apprenticeship standards. Take the time to explore how well the apprenticeship standards align to your business needs.
The apprentice job role will need to combine the requirements of the business with the requirements of the apprenticeship standard, so you will need to build a job description that covers both of these.
Once you have a good understanding of your business needs and have identified the relevant apprenticeship standards, you can then engage with training providers to deliver those apprenticeships.
Prepare your teams for their involvement with the apprenticeships and promote the value of apprenticeships within the organisation. Provide managers with the training and guidance that they need to be able to support their apprentices and define the on-the-job training and mentoring support that you will give your apprentices.
