With this year’s National Apprenticeship Week theme being build the future, we wanted to give Employers the confidence to invest in their staff and utilise Apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are an amazing way to upskill your workforce. With there being over 700 different Apprenticeships to choose from, the possibilities are endless when it comes to ensuring your staff are working to the best of their abilities.

We wanted to answer some of the myths we hear employers ask us about Apprenticeships.

“Apprenticeships cannot be used for existing staff”

Apprenticeships can be used to upskill and retrain new or existing employees! This is a brilliant way to invest in your staff, ultimately contributing to better business performance. Investing in your employees is such an important factor in staff retention and is an amazing way of attracting the best talent.

“Apprenticeships are only for young people (16-18)”

Apprenticeships are available to people of all ages – anyone over the age of 16 living in England can apply. Whether you are working towards a promotion that requires a new skill, or you have decided to have a change in career, apprenticeships are not just available for school leavers.

“Apprenticeships are only for hands on trades”

False! Although apprenticeships started in trades like construction and hairdressing, it is no longer limited to just this. There are courses available to suit so many different roles in a range of industries. You can click here to see the full list of Apprenticeship Standards https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/apprenticeship-standards/

“Because we don’t pay into the Apprenticeship levy, we will have to pay the full training cost”

There is a lot of funding the government can offer to smaller businesses. It is always worth asking us the question to see what funding you could be entitled to, in some cases, the apprenticeships will be fully funded!

To see a breakdown of funding please take a look at this website –  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apprenticeship-funding

“The 20% of the job training will get in the way of the person’s actual job”.

Although it’s correct that 20% of an Apprentice’s time will be off the job training, this does not mean they will always have to be away from the workplace. Some courses allow us to come to the learner’s workplace for assessments and a lot of this training will occur as the apprentice learns more within their role.