Apprenticeships - growing our own workforce
To highlight National Apprenticeship Week, we're celebrating the work of our dedicated and hardworking apprentices. Apprenticeships can be a cost-effective way for the Trust to grow a skilled, flexible and motivated workforce and open up employment opportunities to our local community. They also give staff the chance to upskill, while earning money rather than building up student loan debts.
Chloe Archer, Career Progression and Apprenticeship Lead at the Trust, said: “Apprenticeships are a great way of combining work with study in order to develop your career. We are keen to promote apprenticeship opportunities at the Trust and grow our own workforce. If we can work more with our local schools, colleges and universities, we can also create a local talent pipeline within our community.
“Apprenticeships are accessible to everybody. They are often mistakenly seen as entry-level routes to a profession but in fact we have a lot of development opportunities for staff who already have degrees.”
Apprenticeships at the Trust start at Level 2, equivalent to GCSEs and go up to Level 7, which is the equivalent to a Masters’ Degree. Pathways vary between one to four years in length, depending on the programme. There are currently 14 apprenticeships available within the Trust, which are split between clinical and non-clinical.
Chloe said: “There are some key clinical apprenticeships that run every year such as the registered nurse degrees, occupational therapy and operating department practitioner degrees, but there are also apprenticeships within the business development area and our offer continues to expand."
To encourage apprenticeship schemes and help employers provide staff with a range of training opportunities, the government introduced the apprenticeship levy in 2017. The levy means that an organisation with an annual pay bill of £3million or more, will pay 0.5% into an apprenticeship levy account. It is this money that the Trust uses to pay for apprenticeship training.