Chris Speakman, Speakmans Contractors
I was an apprentice. I’ve been training apprentices for about 18 years, and I listen to what all the education providers say. We deal with colleges across Lancashire into Merseyside. They have a big battle on their hands when it comes to tutors and recruitment.
Colleges do a great job in bringing apprentices in, but it is delivering the apprenticeships. We’re going to have a huge skills gap coming up any time soon. Training providers need to have a good look at their recruitment and retention.
I do see the challenges they have, and we try to work through it as a partner. It’s not a finger- pointing exercise, we need to work with colleges for our apprentices and for our business to grow and develop. So, it is working together. We do have these open conversations.
Tracy Landon, Myerscough College Kate Wallace, Burnley College
Lancashire colleges work really closely to make sure that we’ve got a full offering for our employers so that all skill needs can be met. We’ve got people within the provider network that have specialist provision to ensure that we have that full offering.
With the changing nature of apprenticeships and the challenges that actually working in the sector bring, it’s really important that we all work together, to support each other
It’s one thing going out and selling the dream, but we need to make sure that it becomes a reality. It is about being able to deliver what we are offering and not offering things we can’t deliver, because we want to ensure a quality experience, not only for the employers but for the apprentices as well.
When it comes to recruiting staff, it is a challenge. The only way we’re going to get over the challenge is by working collaboratively with businesses.
Myerscough College is a national college focusing on land and animals. We specialise and don’t really do the mainstream provision anymore. Working with the Lancashire work- based learning employers is key for me. I’m forever on the phone to other colleges referring and passing people on to plug skills gaps. We also meet as a group. It is about the quality of education and friends working together.
We’re doing lots of things to try and recruit and retain our staff. That’s a lot of my work at the moment. Initiatives include engineering uplifts, a bit like the ‘golden hello’ inducement in construction years ago.
Like many others, we’re looking to turn students that were engineering apprentices into staff members. Then there’s temp-to-perm as a way of recruiting. So, there are a lot of things being done in the background.
Sarah Hall, Blackpool and The Fylde College
In Blackpool alone last year there were 3,700 SMEs registered with fewer than ten employees each. If we don’t work together, we’re never going to reach every single one of those.
Working with large employers, they will have a five, seven, ten-year plan. They will have people that they can offer up to come into college and work with us and help share that provision.
A lot of SMEs might not have a five-year plan. They might not know what skills they’re going to need. Our message is, ‘we really want to work with you and help you shape the business’ but it’s getting them to create the time and opportunity to want to do it.
What is also important is being able to attract people, to show there is progression route. From starting at level 3 to a degree apprenticeship, that’s a really attractive offer.
Sally Blades, Veka
We’re starting to run with apprenticeships, 50 per cent of the workforce is in manufacturing. Because there isn’t something off the shelf that suits us, we’re working with Burnley College to define what that is. It is really exciting for us. Soft skills are playing a massive part in the manufacturing apprenticeship profile.
People don’t want to come and work in factories anymore. They love it when they join but it’s trying to attract them. So, offering a different type of apprenticeship will be good for us in the future. We just need to do more of it.
It’s trying to show a long-term career path and where it can get you. So there might be a short-term need to work in production, get a feel for shifts and walk a mile in those shoes, but it progresses to other areas of the business as well. That’s going to be the big focus for us, longer term.
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