1. You can make in-house apprenticeships extremely relevant to your organisation
If you’re willing to invest time and effort into engaging with the rules of running your own degree apprenticeships, you’ll see the extent to which you can embed your organisation’s goals into the programme.
Whether you’re suffering from skills shortages, or you need new energy and insight to transform an aspect of your business – degree apprenticeships are a great solution. You’ll be able to build a more diverse workforce and benefit from training that’s tailored to your business. And with funding from the apprenticeship levy, it’s a cost-effective recruitment solution.
2. There’s plenty of support to help you run apprenticeships in-house
There’s more than one way to run apprenticeships in-house.
You can work with a learning partner
This could be a college, university, or training provider – or several – who can help you tailor apprenticeship programmes to your business needs. Learners would spend some time with the learning partner, and then apply their new skills while learning on the job in your workplace.
Or you can become a learning provider in your own right
While this may be a time-consuming undertaking, all you need to do follow the rules set by the Education & Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and Ofsted. While detailed, once you understand these rules, you just need to implement them. You don’t need to be an apprenticeships expert – just use the rules as instructions – and if you get stuck, there are helplines you can contact for support.
The huge benefit here is you’ll be in complete control of your apprenticeship programmes, which means you’ll be even more able to make them relevant to the very latest changes in your organisation.
3. You can instantly react to business change
Your apprentices can apply their learning immediately to the projects they’re working on for you. These will need to be evidenced as supporting their apprenticeship learning goals, but otherwise they can be focused on anything you need to change in your business.
Ultimately your apprentices can spearhead business change – they’ll have the latest industry insight and a fresh pair of eyes, so they’ll understand the evolution of the organisation faster than anyone else.
4. There really is a lot of funding available
Firstly, if your payroll is more than £3 million, you’re already paying 0.5% of your annual pay bill into the levy. So you may as well access this money to provide apprenticeships and upskill your workforce. Even if you don’t pay the apprenticeship levy, you’d only have to pay 5% towards the cost of apprenticeship training.
And it may be possible to access further funding to support your apprenticeship programmes – for instance, from the Adult Education budget and Department for Work & Pensions.
5. Apprenticeships may become THE way to manage skills shortages
As the range of skills shortages continue and there’s unclaimed funding in the apprenticeship levy, degree apprentices can help you to fill employment gaps – particularly in the technical and digital roles that have traditionally been more difficult to fill.
And if that’s not something you’re too worried about yet – but might be in the future as the world becomes ever more digital – apprenticeships can also help you respond to national and global influences like Brexit and Covid-19. We’ve all seen how many skills gaps have arisen in the UK in the last few years, but with a range of apprenticeship programmes you’ll be creating your own talent pipeline and keeping your
It’s looking more and more like the future! Let us know if we can help.