This week is National Apprenticeship Week. An annual week-long celebration of apprenticeships in England.

And with the current skills crisis in the UK, it may be the perfect time for you to embrace apprenticeships. The benefits reach far beyond simply attracting trainees! By utilising apprenticeships in your company, you can also retain your staff better and increase their wellbeing too.

So to celebrate this week, our team share the top 4 benefits of apprenticeships for employers –

Apprenticeships help you attract more high calibre candidates

Did you feel the pain at Christmas where your current supplier just couldn’t fulfil your headcount needs?  We’ve spoken to many companies about the effects that this has on your efficiency levels. But Christmas is over and the next hurdle we face is the drop in candidate availability. We know how important it is to ensure 100% fulfilment for our clients and working with us can actually help ensure that you can still perform at maximum efficiency.

And there comes a question – How do you attract a higher number of candidates in a shrinking pool of talent?

To attract a higher number of quality candidates, no matter what the industry, it helps is you are able to offer something extra.  Especially when there are currently the highest number of vacancies in the UK ever! Over 1.2million to be exact.

We all know that there are a number of similarities in roles across the warehousing and manufacturing sectors that when advertised as a vacancy, struggle to ‘stand out from the crowd’

By offering apprenticeships, you are able to offer something extra and instantly become attractive. You’re showing that you are investing in the future of your employees. They then in turn see your job as more than just a job. It’s an opportunity. The start of a career. The chance to really make something of themselves.

If you partner with us, we have a proven method to help you attract and retain additional staff at seasonal peaks.

Apprenticeships improve retention

This is a question that troubles a lot of manufacturers. How can you increase retention in a workforce that is regarded as transient?  How can we make them less transient?

An apprenticeship program can really help! When your temps commit to our training program, they are committing to 12-18 months with us. And it’s not just your temps! You can even put your own employees through apprenticeship or vocational training programs and this in turn will help improve retention across the board. See more on this below.

Our vocational training program combines practical skills with a knowledge-based qualification.  At the core of our program is a Diploma that is tailored to the job role.  By offering a training program that requires 12-18 months commitment and one that results in a qualification, you will increase your retention levels dramatically.

In recent feedback, one of our clients reported an 8% improvement in retention with our support!

Improve productivity

It’s no secret that increased continuity of staff increases your productivity. And this in turn results in a direct positive economic impact.

Our personal development programs are not just for our temps that we provide to you. You can upskill your current workforce by utilising our vocational training too! If you already have a team of committed individuals, why not help improve productivity within your operation by giving them additional skills. Skills that will benefit you as a business.  And this isn’t just about making people better at their jobs or being able to perform a wider range of tasks. Although, these are great benefits themselves.

It’s the best candidate welfare strategy out there!

The pandemic, lockdowns and more have all contributed to the increase in awareness of employee wellbeing. According to the CIPD, an increasing proportion of organisations are providing training, particularly to build personal resilience. By giving your temps and permanent employees more skills to do the job, they are better equipped to perform on a daily basis. This can help to reduce feelings of stress.

The additional personal development and worker welfare support will help you become known as an ‘Employer of Choice’. This in itself is an attraction tool for prospective candidates. Which takes us nicely back to step one.

Our approach to apprenticeships

You’ve no doubt been contacted recently by a number of training providers. How do you choose which is best, if any? The provision of training is the same, no matter who you choose. However, when partnering with CSP, we are not just interested in making a quick buck form a training course!  Far from it in fact. We are also going to actively aid attraction and retention as opposed to just upskilling your workforce.

There are some other great advantages that we would like to share with you, but as NONE of our competitors are currently offering what we offer, we’d rather we kept this to a 1-2-1 conversation. It’s probably the most exciting part of this way to increase your workforce and we’d like to shout it from the rooftops. But we’d settle for a phone call instead.

Next Steps

For total peace of mind in your supply partner, get in touch with our experts and find out more about our Total Product Offering.