Lots of businesses don’t know how apprenticeships work, therefore they’re often sceptical about having an apprentice in their establishment. Here you will find everything you need to know about apprenticeships and the benefit they could have to your business.
Cost Effective
Firstly, apprenticeships are a cost-effective way of employing a new full-time member of staff. The minimum wage for an apprentice in their first year is £3.90, if your apprentice worked for 37.5 hours a week for 52 weeks that would still only £7,605! As an added extra from the government, you get £1000 incentive if you recruit a 16-18-year-old (although you can have an apprentice of any age.) The government also covers the vast majority of the training costs; if you pay into the levy then the entirety of the training costs will be drawn down from your levy pot, and if you do not, you pay only 5% of the training costs and the government pays the rest!
For small businesses: if you are a non-levy company and have less than 50 employees when you take on a 16-18-year-old you pay no training fees!
Free recruitment service with SCCU
When you’re thinking about getting a new member of staff its not only wages you have to pay for, it’s the recruitment as well, paying for job advertisements in various ways. At SCCU, you can use our free recruitment service, Talent Bank, to find you the perfect candidates. Just let us know the apprenticeship you need, and we can advertise your role, sift through and shortlist the candidates, we can also arrange and invite candidates to interview; all you have to do is interview them and pick the one you like.
Not just for recruiting- Upskill
Apprenticeships are not just for recruiting; you can use them to upskill current staff. If you have staff that would benefit from some extra training, whether you need a new team leader and don’t want to take on an extra member of staff or would like to promote a current staff member and they just need a few extra skills, an apprenticeship is an easy and hugely cost effective way of doing it. Your staff won’t even have to go off sight for long periods of time, they’ll just need a few hours a month with their tutor, and like with new recruits, their training costs are covered in the same way, so you’d only pay up to 5% of the course costs.
Good use of levy
Levy is use it or lose it- if you don’t use it, it will be taken back in 24months. If you’re a levy paying company the cost of the apprentices training will come straight out of your levy pot, money that you have to pay regardless, so why not use it to benefit your business.
Extra perks for your business and your staff
In the 2017 Apprenticeships evaluation survey, it was found that around 80% of employers using apprentices found that apprentices improved productivity, and around 75% of employers using apprentices found that apprentices improved staff morale.
This is often because having an apprentice gives other members of staff the chance to mentor someone, giving them extra roles and responsibilities allowing them to demonstrate leadership skills and feel more valued in the business.
When you have apprentices, recruited or upskilled, the staff turnover numbers are recorded as being lower, because an employee will be more loyal to an employer they believe is invested in their training and professional development
If you hire a young apprentice, you can mould them to your business. As they’re learning in your business you can shape them to your culture, tailoring their learning to the specific skills you need.
If you’d like to know more about apprenticeships give our office a call to speak to one of our business development advisors and find out how an apprentice could fit in your company. Alternatively, you could visit our website or drop us an email.
02476936969
