Advisory

If you are an employer who hasn’t recruited, employed or trained apprentices before you might be surprised at just how complicated the process can be.

There are more than 500 different types of apprenticeship, a myriad of rules and regulations, and something called ‘funding criteria’. You’ll need ‘fit for purpose’ job descriptions and training plans, and an approved training provider that delivers high quality teaching, learning and assessment.

If you are an employer with an annual salaries bill of £3m or more you’ll pay into the new Apprenticeship Levy. You’ll also want to know how best to recover this. Train your existing staff? Recruit new staff? Or a combination of both?

Our free apprenticeship advisory is designed to help you design and implement a comprehensive apprenticeship plan.

Recruitment

In many ways, recruiting an apprentice is no different to recruiting other staff. You want to get the right person into the right job and you want them to succeed. Getting it right makes all the difference. Celebrities like Stella McCartney, John Frieda and Jamie Oliver all started out as apprentices in the fields they’re famous for.

We've recruited more than 5,000 apprentices and offer a comprehensive range of services that make it easy for you to find the right people, at the right time and get them onto the right apprenticeship.

We do it all for you - drafting job descriptions, attracting candidates, skills screening, long-listing and shortlisting, interview scheduling, references and even DBS checks. We’ll also plan your apprentices' training with you.

Employment

Not sure how to go about employing a new apprentice?
We run a full apprenticeship employment service and can employ apprentices on your behalf using our own bespoke contracts of employment, payroll and human resources management processes. It's a quick and efficient way of getting started and means that we'll take on the key aspects of managing your apprentice and their training whilst you benefit from their work.

We have it all set up already: a bespoke time-sheet-based apprentices’ payroll; specialist apprenticeship contracts of employment; recommended pay rates and incentives, career progression plans.

What's more, because we'll be acting as the legal employer of your apprentice, we take on the role of managing the training providers that deliver your training, leaving you to concentrate on your core business.

Training

At the heart of your apprenticeship scheme is staff training.
Done well, apprenticeship training increases the skill levels of your staff so that they can do the things you need them to do better. But finding the right training provider and managing them and your apprentice(s) at the same time takes time, effort and expertise.
We've managed the training of over 5,000 apprentices, taught and accredited by more than 50 training providers, supporting over 100 different types of apprenticeship. If you are employing 5, 10, 20, 40 or even 60 apprentices you'll probably need more than one training provider to cover all the different qualifications that your apprentices will need.
Our apprenticeship training management service will do all of that for you.

Coaching & Support

Your apprentices have a challenging few years ahead of them.

They have to do their job and at the same time complete their training. They'll need to learn new skills, complete a range of assignments and assessments, sit exams, and if they don't have at least GCSEs, they'll have to do English and Maths too. Some of your apprentices might be young people just starting out on their careers. Others may have worked for you for several years and be completing higher level apprenticeships or degree apprenticeships.

We want them to succeed as much as you do. And we know from years of experience (we've been doing this since 2009) that they'll need help and support as they navigate their way through all the things they have to.

Our apprentice coaching team is dedicated to helping them.

Levy

The Apprenticeship Levy is a new tax that will affect many employers from April 2017. If your annual salaries bill is £3m or more you'll be effected by the Levy and you'll start paying in May 2017.

Our Apprenticeship Levy services are designed to make sure that you are able to fully recover the monies you have paid and maximise additional 'match' funding from central government.

Our objective is to make sure that you fully recover your Levy and train your staff in a meaningful and effective way to the benefit of your organisation. You'll have to pay the Levy anyway - we'll make sure that you recover it and that you benefit from it.