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Supporting leadership capability and confidence with management apprenticeships

When it comes to the high-quality, best practice management and leadership skills that will help UK companies to achieve the Government’s key aims of ’Building Back Better’ and Net Zero, few development paths provide a better business case for delivering returns on resource and time investment than apprenticeships.

Since the reform of the apprenticeship system in 2017 to introduce the Levy funding mechanism and widen their scope to include the development of experienced employees, the market requirement for management and leadership skills has resonated with the Level 3 (Team Leader/Supervisor) and Level 5 (Operations/Departmental Manager) apprenticeship standards, resulting in them both being ever-presents in the top 10 overall starts since.

In the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic, CIPD, ILM, and other highly respected voices on professional skills have highlighted the difference maker that good management and leadership can be when it comes to managing change, dealing with disruption, adapting quickly and returning to growth. The Chartered Management Institute agrees that “Building Back Better’ is impossible without good management and leadership.”

Participating in an apprenticeship programme surrounds managers and leaders with an immersive, vocational learning journey. This means that great emphasis is placed on evidencing new skills within their day-to-day work and using new knowledge to broaden and expand their role. This direct application of fresh ideas and innovative thinking means benefits are quickly realised and immediately obvious

The knowledge, skills and behaviours developed by apprenticeships are acknowledged to encourage existing employees to engage with their employer and to drive confidence, capability and motivation to excel in their role, take more responsibility and plan their next steps up the career ladder.

The time investment (i.e. programme length and ‘off the job’ hours) sometimes holds organisations back from exploring management apprenticeships, but these vocational programmes would not be able to bring about the fundamental changes in knowledge, skills and behaviours without it. Eliesha’s Level 3 and 5 programmes, for example, are highly relevant to learners’ unique workplace challenges: equipping them with the capacity to face them down and helping them evidence the shifts in their ways of working that their employer wants to see.

Eliesha is currently supporting organisations nationwide to develop their management and leadership capacity using apprenticeships, and is accepting enrolments on ’open’ programmes at both Levels 3 and 5, starting in early 2022. National programmes will feature virtual learning workshops, whilst North East programmes will benefit from face-to-face learning workshops at our training centre in Newcastle Business Park.

This ‘open’ model means we can accept any number of apprentices from your organisation, who will form a cohort alongside learners form other organisations.

To find out more or start the enrolment process, get in touch on business@eliesha.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anthony Fray .