In the context of modern business, the word apprenticeship is the least helpful component of something which adds enormous value. The reason is, that to bypass the negative bias it can create, many of us must expend effort. It belongs to the past. In days when trainee-artisans spent one day per week at college being formally taught, it was fit for purpose. Nowadays, for the unenlightened, it implies a day per week of lost productivity in businesses already stretched to the limit or, beginner-level training which is irrelevant to someone in-role and with success under their belt.
Modern apprenticeships are not just for trades people nor, only for the young. They are nationally recognized, practical, vocationally specific, flexibly delivered and individually tailored qualifications customized to acknowledge entry level capability. In other words, made to measure, nationally recognized awards of excellence in subject matter expertise.
Learners committed to these qualifications are fully contributing members of their teams. They often have considerable experience in role which has never been formally assessed or quantified.
Apprentices offer a window into a wider world of excellence within industry sectors which often suffer from insularity and stale talent recycling. This common tendency to play safe and recruit what you know is an ever-decreasing vortex with a shrinking gene pool. Recruitment of an experienced person who hits the ground running can be a good short-term fix but medium to long term, it may weaken organizational capability because, it imports nothing new. It merely offers more of the same and often those moving around do so because of an inability to cut it where they are. Call it, moving before your sell-by date is up.
Mercuri apprentices are trained by practitioners and subject matter experts. Our team are wired into industry innovation, up to the minute developmental best practice and passionate about delivering a broader and deeper perspective to their learners. In turn, those learners bring open-minds, new ideas and challenging questions back into their organizations stimulating discussion, change and performance improvement.
With two of the biggest challenges facing UK PLC being a flatlining economy and low productivity, the need to move away from same-same adrenalin shot training and the search for ever more elusive quick hits has never been stronger.
Take a serious conversation about how an apprenticeship will lift and freshen the baseline capability of your human capital resources. Once organization’s get the taste for the panoramic view they rarely return to the pin-hole perspective.
