Industry Promotion
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Benefits Apprenticeships can bring many benefits to businesses, they: • Demonstrate investment in your people; • Create a culture of professional development; • Develop knowledge, skills and behaviours; • Provide opportunities to upskill existing staff as well as new recruits; • Support succession planning. Training partner You will need to appoint an apprentice training partner to manage the apprentice’s programme and before you do this, you should ask it: • Does it have a delivery model? • What resources does it offer learners? • How will it report on the apprentice’s progress? • What are its success rates? • Can it support with recruitment? Recruitment Whilst training providers can help with recruitment, our advice would be to do this yourself. You could offer internal recommendation schemes, or post on local social media groups and engage with your local school or college. You can also advertise for free on the government’s ‘Find an Apprenticeship’ website. Carl Hobbis, executive director at BIFA and responsible for training, said: “During our Members event in NAW2022, 81% said Customs procedures was the biggest skills shortage in their organisation. So, why would you not consider the IFFS standard to help address this? It is the only apprenticeship standard to have Customs as a mandatory module. “We also asked Members, ‘What are the main barriers preventing you from employing an apprentice?’ 53% said not having an in-house expert to help support with recruitment. Well, a good training provider can help with this and as mentioned earlier, it is so important for line managers and mentors to have time to encourage and develop the apprentice. This is vital. Without the investment of time it is very likely that the employer-apprentice relationship will fail. “Retention was the third biggest issue. We are seeing the bar shifting higher with starting packages ranging between £15,000 and £21,000 for entry level staff. Incentivise them along the journey and reward them on completion. He concluded: “This may seem a high range, and it is not for me to say what companies should pay and I realise it is about affordability. “However, employers need to bear in mind that young people also have financial commitments, cars, insurance, holidays, etc.” If you want to discuss apprenticeships in more detail, contact Carl Hobbis via email at c.hobbis@bifa.org There is also a lot of useful information on our website at https://apprentices.bifa.org/
This is great value when you consider that apprentices will get a large amount of training
Process and financials So how does it all work? Businesses are split into two categories: apprenticeship levy payers and non-levy payers. Levy payers are those businesses with a payroll of £3 million or more annually. The levy is charged at 0.05% of annual payroll and goes into a digital account to be used towards the apprenticeship training. Non-levy payers must pay 5% of the cost to run the apprenticeship. The IFFS has one of the highest price tags that could be agreed at £9,000, but in this instance the employer would only need to pay £450 in total (the government will pay 100% of the cost if the apprentice is aged 16-18!). This is great value when you consider that apprentices will get a large amount of training, with many also doing BIFA courses including the BTEC Customs qualification, which equates to around £1,400. As the employer, you must pay them a salary; after all, apprenticeships are real jobs.
We would like to thank James Billingham, of Skills Office Network (Logical Training), for his contribution to this article. https://www.skillsofficenetwork.co.uk/
April 2022
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