Why you should be hiring an apprentice for your business

Aug 03, 2018

With the new BBC-TV series The Apprentice now underway, the idea of business apprenticeships is very topical. While going down the road of hiring an apprentice of the type and in the way that Lord Sugar will be doing between now and Christmas is neither a good idea nor very practical, you should seriously look at the idea of hiring a traditional type of apprentice.

A growing number of businesses are doing just this and reporting considerable benefits from doing so. In the UK, apprenticeships are backed by the government and are a nationally recognised qualification. Training is carried out on the job with apprentices working alongside your existing staff to gain the necessary knowledge and experience relevant to your business. Apprenticeships are a way of bringing young, enthusiastic and motivated new staff into your organisation that you can mould and develop to meet your specific needs.

The apprenticeship model is an ideal method for learning a very specific task or job because the idea is that students work very closely with an expert. As a way of learning, it is of course nothing new and has been around for centuries. The success factors for this way of learning are as follows.

  • The apprentice should be actively involved and not just a passive observer.
  • As well as working closely with the experts, the apprentice should interact with customers and management.

An apprentice should start by watching and thinking about the job. They should move on to beginning to do the job with close guidance from the expert. Within a ‘safety net’ they should then have a go themselves. Finally they should begin to do the job in its entirety with the expert on hand if needed. One of the advantages of this way of learning is that ‘tacit’ aspects of the job can be picked up – in other words, the informal aspects of the job that are not taught in theory training sessions.

So if you have recruitment needs and haven’t previously considered hiring an apprentice, it is well worth looking into. Employers who have not taken on an apprentice in the last year may be eligible to receive a £1,500 grant. Research has found that companies who employ apprentices lower their recruitment costs because training staff is more cost-effective than hiring skilled staff.

If you employ an apprentice, your commitments include making sure that all work is supervised, that you pay the apprenticeship salary and that you allow time for the apprentice to attend college.

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