The positivity of seminars

The ‘new world’ apprenticeships seem to have either been embraced or dismissed by employers. Through our own discussions we have surmised that this can be attributed down to the nature of an employer’s business, the current challenges that they face, their workforce distribution and their employees’ job roles. Simply put, some have the bandwidth to meet the 20% off-the-job requirement, and others don’t.  

With regards to the 20% off-the-job requirement, like other providers, we have utilised online portfolios (bespoke to the client), e-learning, research papers, CPD logs, Skype, face-to-face meetings and skills activities packs, to name but a few, all of which are aimed at capturing and supporting evidence with regards to how the standard has been met and how the 20% off-the-job requirement has been captured. These are all proven delivery methods and have historically been embraced by apprentices, and indeed are effective in achieving what is required. However, the 20% off-the-job requirement comes with its own inherent problems for apprentices, a common theme seems to be that an apprentice plans a period of activity into their daily or weekly schedule and inevitably it doesn’t materialise due to operational-critical business needs. In other words, they don’t get around to achieving what was planned! This then has a knock-on effect as the planned activity must be rolled over to the next day, week or month.

To combat this, we did trial formal classroom-based sessions, but apprentices seemed both hesitant and reluctant to book on. We believe that this was down to their perception, i.e. ‘it’s like going back to school again’. Too that end we changed tack and now use ‘seminars’, which I have to say have been extremely successful. This we believe is down to the name ‘seminar’, and how we have designed them, i.e. making them bespoke to the business, interesting, inclusive, engaging, enjoyable and motivational. Rather than going with the ‘norm’ and covering an element of the standard, we have changed strategy and designed them to run in conjunction with the standards, so in essence it’s around the same theme but covers new and diverse content that allows apprentices from differing apprenticeships to attend the same seminar because the content is relevant to everyone. All seminars are interspersed with individual and group exercises and tasks, with one of the exercises meeting at least one element of their chosen standard. CPD certificates are issued electronically after the seminar, which are uploaded as formal evidence of CPD, along with their completed element of work. The success of the seminars, we believe, can be attributed down to many things such as word of mouth by apprentices to their colleagues as to how enjoyable they are. They are conducted outside of the workplace, so apprentices are away from their working environment. The seminar dates are promoted well in advance to allow apprentices the opportunity to effectively plan their attendance, more than one of the same seminar is advertised allowing for a choice of dates, and apprentices are afforded the opportunity to meet colleagues that they may have never met before due to their geographic location or they may be from different departments.

As a forward-thinking company, we are always looking for innovative delivery methods. Does anyone else have any ideas or strategies that they employ to meet the 20% off-the-job requirement?