With companies having paid well over £4 billion into the Apprenticeship Levy pot in the last 24 months, and only around 15–20% of this being utilised, all Levy paying organisations need to ensure they understand how to take advantage of their investment fully — otherwise they risk not getting enough return on their investment or worse, losing their money with nothing to show for it.
The Apprenticeship Levy
If you are paying the Apprenticeship Levy, not only do you want to ensure you invest this effectively, but you will also want to ensure you maximise the impact of this investment for your employees and business.
From our experience working with the Apprenticeship Levy and a wide range of customers from 17 industries spread across the private, public and not for profit sectors, you will find below 6 steps our customers take to maximise the value of their Levy Pot.
Step 1 — Get buy-in from the top
Without senior leaders supporting the programme, it is almost guaranteed to fail.
This involves more than just paying lip service to the market, shareholders or your customers by saying the company supports learning and employees starting the apprenticeship programme.
It needs to be a commitment to supplying the employees time in their busy role to focus on their learning.
One of the main reasons Apprentices fail or drop-out is they don’t have the time to spend on the programme or feel spending time on their apprenticeship is not a priority.
This is also one of the main reasons why companies are reluctant to involve their employees on apprenticeship programmes. However, learning while at work delivers huge benefits to productivity and knowledge sharing in the organisation.
To help get buy-in from the top, you need to find the right training provider to fit the needs of your organisation.
Step 2 — Get the correct strategic partner
So, what does the right training provider look like?
A good partner will take the time to understand your business needs and will support you by identifying your training priorities and ensure these fit into the apprenticeship programme effectively.
A truly great provider will tailor the programme to your long-term strategic objectives, the immediate needs of the business and the needs of your learners. They will then be able to evidence the positive impacts the programme is having on your business.
They will also help you to understand how, based on your individual requirements, you can utilise your levy pot fully to truly maximise its, and your employees’, potential.
Step 3 — Utilising your entire pot to maximise benefits
If you don’t use your entire levy pot, then this is consolidated back into the Government coffers and there is no guarantee it will be re-spent to support your employees and business.
Therefore, it is in your interest to spend the entirety of your pot. Look at the range of apprenticeships available and survey your staff to see what they would be keen to undertake, get them involved in selecting their learning programme.
Many of our customers reap even greater benefits by spending their pot in full. As of April 2019, if you spend your entire pot, you will now only pay 5% towards the cost of any further apprenticeship training. The government will pay the other 95%. You will be up-skilling your staff almost for free from this point.
What if this isn’t possible? There is another way to ensure you drive more value, by nurturing partnerships.
Step 4 — Nurture Partnerships
If you can’t fully utilise your entire levy pot, then you have the potential to transfer up to 25% of your pot to other organisations, including those in your supply chain.
This provides a great opportunity for you to enhance partnerships and up-skill suppliers whose staff may have a direct effect on your business’ productivity.
By using the same apprenticeship provider, this can result in joint programmes that build relationships across all your partners and a deeper understanding of the value your organisations supply each other.
This will also ensure your suppliers understand your objectives and feel aligned in supporting you to achieve your goals.
Another way to maximise the value is by creating a learner’s mentor programme.
Step 5 — Mentors
Allocating each learner a mentor who is part-way through, or who has already completed the programme will pay back in dividends.
By combining your apprenticeship programme with a mentoring programme then not only are your apprentices more likely to succeed, knowledge is transferred within your business and your more experienced staff will develop their mentoring skills, which can result in stronger inter-organisational relationships. In turn this helps build a culture of collaboration and growth.
Regardless of the sector you work in, or your business strategy, effective utilisation of your Apprenticeship Levy pot will not only ensure your payments are not lost, but it has the potential to improve staff retention, business productivity and company culture.
You may also find our How to develop your Future Leaders guide useful in creating your practical and outcome-focused approach to building a learning culture.
If you have any questions or would like further information on how we can support you with utilising your Apprenticeship Levy effectively, please get in touch — we’d love to hear from you.