Sadie Besley, Divisional Managing Director for Professional Talent Solutions, Randstad
What is a Flexi Apprenticeship?
The Flexi Job Apprenticeship programme offers the ability for learners to take on short-term placements at multiple companies, providing access to greater experience across a range of different projects. For employers, they're now able to access an untapped pool of talent in a different way, most likely attracting a more diverse workforce as a result.
With a Flexi Apprenticeship, the agency fully employs the apprentice; we give them a permanent contract. They may work at multiple companies in that professional sector that they are training in, but that is down to the agency to own each of those placements for them but work alongside organisations that can really add value to their learning experience.
Where have they come from?
Just over a year ago, there was a pilot programme. The government identified that nearly 3 percent of the UK workforce, particularly in England, is working on a flexible basis for lots of different reasons that suit their individual arrangements, and many of those work through agencies, or organisations that work with agencies, on a regular basis so they wanted to provide an opportunity to learn for those individuals, which in the UK is around one million people.
The trial ended in the middle of last year and then only last October, a new programme was launched for new providers to enter the programme formally. At the moment, there's only a handful of national providers that are working on this programme.
Can you tell us how they work?
Most of the organisations currently on the programme are using an external provider, but in Randstad's case, we have our own internal apprenticeship program already running.
For any employee who wants to use Flexi Apprentices, we can help design a program specific to them as well. We already work with a number of super brands and employers all around the country but we're talking to employers now about taking on flexi apprentices to not just supplement their workforce, but help skill their workforce in ways in which they've not been able to do so before.
So here's a live example - if you think about schools and teaching assistants, during the pandemic and post-pandemic, teaching assistants have left that profession for better-paid jobs, unfortunately, which is having an impact on staffing in schools.
One of the programmes that we're designing is a level three apprenticeship for teaching assistants. We're working alongside multi-academy trusts, where they can have a pool of teaching assistants that work across the whole MAP trust.
We'll train them before they go into the workplace, and continue to train them for the following 12 to 14 months so that they fully qualify as well. And for those multi-academy trusts, those schools, they're not just getting a skilled workforce, but that workforce is getting more skilled during that time and they're giving back and adding to the workforce, which is a real problem in that sector.
How long do they last, and what do they cost?
The length can vary depending on what level the learner is going through; a level through three might typically take 12 to 14 months depending on the individual. Sometimes it's a little bit longer. We go all the way up through to level seven apprenticeships and those take longer.
The costing works in two ways. For an employer, they get the benefits of using an agency and they pay an agency in the traditional way. There's a sliding scale of how that works.
The salary of the worker is paid by the agency directly to the apprentice, but indirectly by the employer to the agency. So, in its normal hourly rates, it's not a different higher rate because of the apprentice, it's just whatever it would normally be for that particular sector and role.
What should someone do if they want to know more?
They can find more information via this link or by contacting our team using alice.wheeler@randstad.co.uk
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