6 COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT EMPLOYING AN APPRENTICE

At Active Apprentice, we live and breathe apprenticeships. All of our employed agency staff will enter into government funded training schemes, most of them will be an apprenticeship. We believe that apprenticeships are a fantastic way to get you not only the candidate you need right now, but the star employee of the future for your business.

Gone are the days when this was just for an individual entering into the workplace, starting at the bottom and working their way up.

In the last few years great strides have been made into making Apprenticeships and its funding a substantial and viable way of gaining the skills you need in your business, so much so that there are now degree apprenticeships across many sectors.

Why do we love apprenticeships? Because apprenticeships:

Improve productivity in a company by £214 a week
Are a tried and tested way to recruit new staff AND retrain or upskill existing staff
Can help tackle skill shortages that drive economic growth
Are a great way of attracting enthusiastic talent with fresh ideas
They can be tailored to specific job roles, making them flexible to the needs of your business
Provide you with the skilled workers you need for the future
Can help reduce staff turnover, by increasing employee satisfaction and loyalty.

So, to help you bust some myths around apprenticeships, so we’ve listed out 6 common misconceptions about hiring your next apprentice!

1. “Taking on an apprentice is time consuming” – Well yes, taking on any member of staff is time consuming and costly. Statistics show that for every recruited It costs the business on average £2000 according to the CIPD.

However, at Active Apprentice we take care of the vast majority of the work for you. We recruit on your behalf. All you need to do is tell us what you’re looking for in your next star employee. We design the ad and advertise, we shortlist and if you really want us too, we’ll even interview them for you!!

Time is money, your time is valuable, let us take care of the work for you and save you time and money.

2. “It’s too risky for my business to take on an apprentice” – Many businesses say it’s too risky to commit to taking on a member of staff, let alone one that needs training. However, aside from the fact you need the additional support in your business and let’s remove the fact they are an apprentice for a second, can you really afford not too?

Active Apprentice employ all staff directly and we place them with you as the host employer. Meaning that we are the Apprentices employer, so we issue contracts, pay wages, complete all of their administrative requirements and we take care of all of their HR activity.

The service is fully flexible, so we agree when you need them and for how long, we deploy them elsewhere within our employer network when you don’t.

So, the risk is all taken care of by us.

3. “Apprenticeships are only for school leavers” – They are indeed for school leavers, as well as high flying executives and everything in between.

A lot of work has been put into ensuring that Apprenticeships are not only a viable alternative to a degree, but in many cases the better route to the career your employees have always dreamt of and providing you the skills you need within your business.

Apprenticeships are for anyone who is:

Starting a career,
Changing their career,
Looking to progress up the career ladder
Or is looking to get their masters to become a career professional such as a Solicitor.

All of this can be done under the banner of an apprenticeship and the best bit is it’s funded by the government!

4. “An Apprentice is only cheap labour” – If that’s your view on an apprentice, then they can indeed be cheaper labour than a non-apprentice as the minimum apprenticeship wage is £4.30 per hour vs £8.91 per hour for someone who is aged 23 and over.

At Active Apprentice if this is the need for your business, we can support you in hiring an apprentice at this wage. However, it’s not something we encourage. Why? Because our experience tells us that if you pay someone an apprenticeship wage for more than the first 3-6 months, you’ll lose that talent forever. So, we encourage all Active Apprentice employees to be paid the National Living Wage for their age. This way, you get back what you put into their development and improve productivity.

5. “Apprenticeships are only for jobs in a practical industry” – ‘Only’ isn’t quite right, they work extremely well for the sectors that are more practical in nature and have a long legacy of delivering careers to those who work in them.

Now however, they are for every industry, with the top 5 sectors for employing apprentices including Health & Medicine and Accountancy.

There are apprenticeships for everything from

A Leisure Team Member to a Laboratory Scientist’s Apprenticeship degree,
From a Baker to Broadcast Engineer’s apprenticeship degree,
From a Community Activator Coaching apprenticeship to Clinical Pharmacologist’s apprenticeship degree.

The opportunities are diverse and growing every day!

6. “An Apprenticeship standard doesn’t include the training I want them to do” – At Active Apprentice we do things differently, we Give Back. We don’t just say it, we do what we say!

Our apprentices will work with you while they complete a minimum of 38 days of training towards their apprenticeship. We work with our employer partners from the start to design what this training will look like including an additional 10 ‘Give back days’ where it is agreed the specific training, activities and skills development that is needed for their business.

So, it’s easy to see why apprenticeships are a viable and easy solution to your workforce needs and much easier way of empowering both individuals and employers to create sustainable change by developing an agile, resilient and highly skilled workforce fit for the future.