Employer / Contractor Benefits of Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship provides skill training and job related theory tailored to your company’s and the industry’s needs. Through combined hands-on training and classroom instruction, apprentices gain knowledge and skills that enable your company to more efficiently and cost-effectively provide high quality craftsmanship to the client, building client loyalty and your professional reputation.
Much of your knowledge is implicit – you know how to do things, but you don’t consciously know how you know it, or why it’s important. In the process of teaching your apprentice, you’re also putting your own process into an external form, which can be easily examined and improved. By teaching your process and skills to an apprentice, hidden problems and inefficiencies will become very clear. That’s a wonderful thing – your apprentice can help you improve the process and systems you’re using, so you’ll get better results with less effort.
Here are more, specific benefits to training apprentices:
- Improve your bottom line: Apprentices not only save you money on wages, apprenticeship can be more cost-effective than hiring highly skilled individuals who you end up paying for having more knowledge than you need at the time.
- Fill your skills gaps: Apprentices are learning the cutting edge of the trade. Hiring apprentices brings in the most up-to-date knowledge to your company.
- Apprentices tend to be eager, motivated, flexible and loyal to the company that invested in them. Remember, an apprentice is with you because they want to be – they have made an active choice to learn on the job and a commitment to a specific career.
- Have employees who are not only trained to provincial industry standards but also understands your unique workplace conditions.
- Attract adequate numbers of highly qualified applicants
- Reduce absenteeism and turnover
- Increase productivity
- Cost-effective solution to training and retaining a professional workforce
- Facilitate compliance with Federal and State Equal Employment Opportunity requirements
- Ensure availability of related technical instruction
- Enhance problem-solving ability of employees
- Ensure versatility of employees
- Address industry’s need to remain competitive by investing in the development and continuous upgrade of the skills of its workforce
- Develop a reservoir of skilled workers, many of whom are potential supervisors
- Receive State and National recognition for efforts to train people in skills necessary to become contributing members of society
- Build greater customer satisfaction generated by quality workmanship
- Improve community relations
- Improve employee relations and loyalty
- Allows you to have within your company a pool of experienced employees of different ages so that you will be better able to plan to meet future workforce needs due to expansion plans or the retirement of older trades persons
Benefits in numbers
Research conducted in February 2008 by Populus on behalf of the LSC to launch the first National Apprenticeship Week revealed:
- 77% of employers believe Apprenticeships make them more competitive;
- 76% say that Apprenticeships provide higher overall productivity;
- 80% feel that Apprenticeships reduce staff turnover;
- 83% of employers rely on their Apprenticeships program to provide the skilled workers that they need for the future;
- Two-thirds of respondents believe that their Apprenticeship program helps them fill vacancies more quickly, whilst
- 88% believe that Apprenticeships lead to a more motivated and satisfied workforce;
- 59% report that training apprentices is more cost-effective than hiring skilled staff, with 59% believing that Apprenticeships lead to lower overall training costs and 53% feeling that they reduce recruitment costs;
- In terms of the return on investment linked to Apprenticeships, 41% say that their apprentices make a valuable contribution to the business during their training period, while a further third (33%) report that apprentices add value within their first few weeks (or even from Day One);
- 57% report a high proportion of their apprentices going on to management positions within the company;
- Over three-quarters of respondents expect apprenticeships to play a bigger part in their recruitment policy in the future.
Please feel free to give us a call at 866.959.2432, email us, or complete the request for more information.