Why Should I Hire an Apprentice?

Apprenticeships give people an opportunity to work full time, while studying for a qualification in their chosen field. Crucially, apprentices can be employed at different levels, giving you access to people whose existing skillset vary. This generally includes those who have just left school, university graduates and people who want to further their careers or change career direction completely.

During their time with, you an apprentice will learn technical skills, before applying themselves to their work. By developing their skillset on the job, an apprentice can play a pivotal role in narrowing your company’s skill gap.

With more companies than ever taking the leap and hiring an apprentice, this article will go through the potential benefits that you can attain by making the same move.  

Apprenticeships can be tailored to specific job roles

If your business needs to focus on a specific area, apprenticeships can be tailored to fill spare job roles. By hiring an apprentice, you will gain an enthusiastic and motivated employee to cover the flexible needs of your business. 

Also, as apprentices are going through the first stages of their career, they don’t come equipped with bad working habits. Therefore, they can be trained effectively to meet your current and future business needs.

Close the skills gap

Hiring an apprentice is a cost effective way of closing your company’s skill gap. A particular benefit to employing young people is that they are naturally accustomed to using technology. With extensive knowledge of the digital world, young people can help your company to continuously modernise. Because of this, apprentices are likely to be comfortable using social media. Having a strong social media presence allows you to grow your brand and connect with a wider demographic of people.    

As apprentices are highly likely to stay on at their place of work after completing their apprenticeship, you are future proofing your business by developing emerging talent. You can also upskill an existing employee to help close your company’s skills gap.   

By investing in the growth of your employees, they will be able to learn new skills and advance their ability. An apprentice will often recognise the investment that their employer has made in them, creating a sense of loyalty to their colleagues and company. As a result of this, staff satisfaction and retention rates should improve. Additionally, companies can improve the quality of their product or service, as the work is being carried out by employees with a heightened skillset.

Cost-effectiveness

Hiring an apprentice is deemed to be very cost effective. Not only do apprentices come with a lower salary, apprenticeship programmes are largely funded by the government. This means that you don’t have to worry about funding the training and education of an apprentice, making apprenticeships more of an intriguing prospect for many companies.

After finishing their apprenticeship programme, you will have the opportunity to offer the apprentice a full-time job. This makes the training more of a valuable investment, as you are gaining access to the ever-developing skillset of a young employee.

Attract the best upcoming talent

By hiring apprentices, you are employing young people who are looking to improve and maximise their skillset in a professional environment. While, they might not come readily equipped with an extensive range of soft skills just yet, apprentices will be keen to learn and develop in the workplace.

Securing the best up and coming talent available means that you are bringing young, enthusiastic employees on board, which could improve productivity across the wider organisation. Although, they are not familiar with the typical working environment, apprentices who sufficiently apply themselves are completing a qualification while also gaining work experience. Therefore, by hiring an apprentice you are making the most of a driven individual who is capable of multitasking.  

Get a fresh perspective

On top of many other positive things, diversity allows for a variety of skills and creative processes to intertwine as a collective, helping a workforce to become more productive. Because of the extensive catalogue of benefits, diversity is highly valued by many companies. While, this is usually pinpointed as either race or gender, age is also a key differentiator of diversity.

As apprentices are generally young and at the beginning of their career, they will arrive well-equipped with fresh ideas. Although, you might think your company has a long-lasting, reliable way of doing things, an apprentice could bring a different perspective that prompts you to make a change. Also, if you are attempting to reach a younger demographic, then hiring an apprentice can allow you to connect more efficiently with your target audience.

If hiring an apprentice is something that you are interested in, you can contact Pareto for help.