Columnist

Low-skilled apprenticeships a ‘waste of time’

Michael McMeekin, from Arrow Sales Training looks at the increasing number of low-skilled apprenticeships.

This was an interesting article on Sky News website on comments from Sir Michael Wilshaw.

Whether you agree or disagree with the comments of Sir Michael Wilshaw they are certainly worth discussing and forming your own opinion. However before you start forming your opinion answer the following question. “Do you think apprenticeships offer value to the apprentice and the employer?”

An interesting result from a recent Manpower Group survey was that:

“The hardest-to-fill jobs continue to be in skilled trades roles, followed this year by Sales representatives“

Looking at the employers point of view there is a need to have new staff with the right skills who can successfully complete the job roles and responsibilities. There are jobs that are not getting filled because of a lack of suitably qualified job seekers.

Another point is that the employer should also be looking at training their existing staff to increase their skills.

So before we answer the question “Do you think apprenticeships offer value to the apprentice and the employer?” I would take it a bit further.

Employers need their employees and new start employees to be suitably qualified which in my opinion is that they need them trained to a high standard and quality. It doesn’t matter if it is under an apprenticeship, a degree or on the job training it is fact that employers need their staff to be trained to a high standard.

There is some great value in training in apprenticeships, degrees and on the job training. It has to be something that improves the skills of the employees and in turn increases their value to the employer which results in an improvement of the company.

This could be in customer satisfaction, new customers, more customers, repeat orders, an increase in revenue and profit and the holy grail the creation of full time well paid jobs.

We should be looking at the employer’s needs for what they need to make their business more competitive, more efficient and successful. It is these needs that we should be looking at filling be it apprenticeships or degrees.

Another food for thought is that the bad press shouldn’t be just on apprenticeships there are some sectors that have difficulty filling jobs as some graduates are not getting taught the right skills at university. Take digital marketing in my experience in the last three weeks after visiting three digital agencies they complained that the universities aren’t teaching their students up to date digital skills to enable them to do the job.

If we can deliver trained employees to employers by training them on the right skills the next stage is to look at the quality of the training.

Some apprenticeships in my experience have been about assessing the apprentice on whether they have the skills which to me is a paper exercise of ticking boxes. Some apprenticeships have been brilliant, there has been an employer need, a motivated apprentice with good quality training ending in a valuable exercise for all parties

Apprenticeships should be about training, educating, motivating and encouraging them to learn new skills that they put into practice for the benefit of themselves and the company that gives them an opportunity. Achieve this and we have an individual who is of value to the company and they are motivated to achieve something they didn’t think possible.

Yes some low skilled apprenticeships are a waste of time ask some digital agencies whether some of the degrees are a waste of time and they will say yes.

It doesn’t matter if it is a low skilled apprenticeship or a degree it is down to the quality of the training and importantly the exact requirements of our businesses.

Lets take a look at what we need to do to build our businesses and ensure that we deliver skilled, motivated and well paid employees that help our economy.

We can do this by delivering quality training to the exact requirements of employers and not by targeting numbers of apprenticeships. A focus on better quality training may not hit the government numbers but it will hit the employers needs which will increase the chances of improving the quality of our businesses.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Arrow Sales Training Limited .