Trusts’ apprenticeship strategy development – things to be considered
Whilst the Trusts are working towards meeting their public sector targets and to meet the demands of
the levy it is important to be focussed on the development of the workforce to make the
implementation worthwhile. The trusts need to develop strategies on the workforce development of
staff through apprenticeships. Some have started and through this process some emerging themes
have come out that all should consider
Under the current policy there are two types of apprentices. The first type is one that you would
traditionally recognise as an apprenticeship. A new (usually, but not, exclusively young) member of
staff would train on the job to learn that job and ultimately become qualified. It may or may not also
include release to attend training externally (one day a week, once a month etc.).
The second type is aimed at existing workers who will be learning some new skills within their normal
role; again it may or may not also include release to attend training externally. So whilst it might not
seem like an apprentice in the traditional sense, this type of apprenticeship should be thought of as a
mechanism for receiving training and having abilities and understanding recognised through
qualifications for the job that they are doing.
It is envisaged that there would be different situations within these types
New staff
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The workforce planning and development have identified new roles within the trust and these
roles are suitable for new apprentices to be employed
Staff have left and new vacancies become available and these are identified for new
apprentices – some trusts are exploring a policy attached to this that all Bands 1-4 vacancies
must be apprenticeships unless a business case is made for it not being so
Existing staff
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•
Existing staff are working in jobs that have never been accredited and now apprenticeships
allow them to be so
Existing staff where new apprenticeships are available and that apprenticeship might
represent potential career progression
Based on the fact that it will take time to backfill posts and vacancies into apprenticeships and as it is
taking time for new apprenticeship standards to come on-line we envisage that in an attempt to meet
public sector targets and the apprenticeship levy the early focus will be on accrediting existing staff as
apprentices.
It is important that in the rush to start existing staff as apprentices that the focus on utilising
apprenticeships to address recruitment and retention issues through workforce planning and
development isn’t lost. We feel it is important for the strategies run concurrently until apprenticeships
become the norm and the key recruitment tool.
Planning - Apprenticeship numbers v Apprenticeship levy
Whilst trusts have looked at the finances of their wage bill to determine how much they will pay in
annually to the levy it can be very difficult to equate that to the number of apprentices because of the
variable nature of the cost of each apprenticeship. However to give it some real context, to humanise
it and to plan more effectively numbers of apprentices have to be arrived at somehow. We will look at
a couple of things that need to be taken into consideration when arriving at that figure.
Most of the completed development in healthcare apprenticeship standards has been at Level 2 and
3. The Nursing Associate role has been proposed to develop an apprenticeship standard but based
on previous timescales for apprenticeship standard development, we would envisage it not being
available until 2018. The Nursing degree apprenticeship standard hasn’t been approved yet so again
we would think the best case scenario for this to be available would be September 2017. As the
majority of the available apprenticeships are at level 2 and 3 and as we know the funding cap for
Level 2 is £3000 it will mean a lot of apprenticeship training within Bands 1-4 needs to take place to
meet the levy. As a comparison we know that the Healthcare Assistant Practitioner Apprenticeship at
Level 5 will have a funding cap of £12000. Please note that it doesn’t always follow suit that the
higher the level the greater the funding.
In terms of apprenticeship levy funding, training up two Assistant Practitioners is the same as training
up eight Healthcare Support Workers at Level 2.You can see that deciding on a number as a target
has the capacity to be wildly inaccurate. This can be alleviated only by a thorough and detailed
workforce development strategy based on roles and potential vacancies.
Another point, related to the funding mechanisms, also has to be taken into account when arriving at
an apprenticeship figure. Funding for apprenticeships is collected under the levy via the wage bill and
HMRC and paid into the digital apprenticeship service on a monthly basis. The funding for each
apprenticeship is also paid to the training provider from the digital apprenticeship service on a monthly
basis. The monthly payment for each individual apprenticeship will be calculated thus: The total
amount of the agreed funding for the apprenticeship (e.g. £3000) divided by the length of the
apprenticeship in months (e.g. 12 months) will give the monthly payment (e.g. £250 per month)
This seems simple enough, but when they actually start on their apprenticeship will impact greatly on
the levy spend. As an example, if a trust has calculated that they have a levy bill of £1.2m per year
and have averaged out the cost of each apprenticeship at £5000 it would be reasonable to assume
that 240 apprentices are needed per year. If the trust again, quite reasonably, spreads this out across
the year (e.g. 20 per month) the spreadsheet below would show you the outcome.
Months
Levy amount paid to the DAS per month based
on total annual amount /12
Number of apprenticeship starts capped at
£5000
Monthly amount per 20 apprenticeships (based
on 5000/12)
Amount of draw down per month (based on
5000/12)
underspend from DAS per month
August September October November December January February March
April
May
June
July
Total
£100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
£1,200,000.00
240
£8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33 £8,333.33
£8,333.33 £16,666.67 £25,000.00 £33,333.33 £41,666.67 £50,000.00 £58,333.33 £66,666.67 £75,000.00 £83,333.33 £91,666.67 £100,000.00
£91,666.67 £83,333.33 £75,000.00 £66,666.67 £58,333.33 £50,000.00 £41,666.67 £33,333.33 £25,000.00 £16,666.67 £8,333.33 £0.00
£650,000.00
£550,000.00
As you can see from the highlighted box, based on these projections, at the end of the year, the trust
would have £550,000 unspent from the levy in their account. To achieve the full spend they would
either need to start all 240 at the first month – which sounds untenable or they would need to
calculate more apprentice numbers. The spreadsheet below shows another example
Months
Levy amount paid to the DAS per month based
on total annual amount /12
Number of apprenticeship starts capped at
£5000
Monthly amount per 20 apprenticeships (based
on 5000/12)
Amount of draw down per month (based on
5000/12)
underspend from DAS per month
August September October November December January February March
April
May
June
July
Total
£100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00
50
50
50
£20,833.33 £20,833.33
£0.00 £20,833.33
50
50
50
50
90
£0.00 £20,833.33 £20,833.33 £20,833.33 £20,833.33
£0.00 £37,500.00
£1,200,000.00
440
£0.00
£20,833.33 £41,666.67 £41,666.67 £62,500.00 £62,500.00 £83,333.33 £104,166.67 £125,000.00 £145,833.33 £145,833.33 £183,333.33 £183,333.33
£79,166.67 £58,333.33 £58,333.33 £37,500.00 £37,500.00 £16,666.67 -£4,166.67 -£25,000.00 -£45,833.33 -£45,833.33 -£83,333.33 -£83,333.33
£1,200,000.00
£0.00
This shows a number of apprenticeship starts spread out over a 12 month period and as you can see
there are 440 starts in this example that generates the full spend. The only way around this is to
fully plan in detail down to the apprenticeship subject area with its funding attached and
profile starts from the very beginning. The safeguard in actually not losing the levy immediately
after 24 months is that funding will always be taken from the oldest monthly pot e.g. if April 2017 was
the first payment and you had apprenticeship starts in September 2017, it would be taken from the
April pot rather than the September pot.
Leaving this until later is not an option. The spreadsheet below shows the amount of apprentices
you would have to start if you left it until the last month of the year – 2880!
Months
Levy amount paid to the DAS per month based
on total annual amount /12
Number of apprenticeship starts capped at
£5000
Monthly amount per 20 apprenticeships (based
on 5000/12)
Amount of draw down per month (based on
5000/12)
underspend from DAS per month
August September October November December January February March
April
May
June
July
Total
£100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00
£1,200,000.00
2880
2880
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00 £1,200,000.00
£0.00 £0.00 £0.00 £0.00 £0.00 £0.00 £0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00 £1,200,000.00
£100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 £100,000.00 -£1,100,000.00
£1,200,000.00
£0.00
New staff and existing staff numbers
As you can see from the diagram below we envisage that the trusts will find it difficult to meet
their public sector targets, due to their low starting base, but will hope to meet their levy
targets before money is lost.
We also envisage that as the numbers of apprenticeships increase on an upward trajectory the bulk of
the early apprentices will be existing workers (and in many cases quick wins) and this will change to
new staff as time goes on.
Strategies and Principles for identifying new posts
We envisage that the Trusts will develop strategies or principles for identifying new posts for
apprenticeships. They may well include:
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Identifying all Bands 1 – 3 or 4 as potential apprenticeship roles. As posts become vacant the
default position would that they should recruit for an apprentice but managers have the option
to make a clear business case for why it would not be appropriate. To many trusts this
approach would enable them to meet their apprenticeship targets due to their level of
turnover. Others have low turnover of staff so this wouldn’t allow them to reach their levy
targets
The fact that degree apprenticeships will be developed in clinical areas in the future, long
term workforce planning will need to identify new apprenticeship posts as part of a ‘grow your
own’ strategy
There are existing ‘hard to recruit’ posts that people can be developed into as apprentices
There are gaps in service delivery that no roles exists for and they would like to create a new
role and the trailblazer gives them an opportunity to develop apprenticeship standards for
Setting out the benefits and values of apprenticeships and asking managers to actively seek
recruiting apprentices. This has the benefit of true engagement but we feel it will return very
low numbers, because they could had taken that option prior to now and have not
Pay structures
Trusts are also grappling with pay structures for apprentices and policies are developing.
Apprenticeships are not included in the Agenda for Change terms and conditions and as a result it
has caused consternation on how to proceed. Options have included:
•
The trusts policy is that no staff receives less than Band 3 salary and this will be extended to
apprenticeships. Whilst this is an admiral policy there will be no cost saving benefits and may
well adversely affect staff motivation when existing workers who are experienced find
themselves mentoring/training an apprentice who is on the same salary
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•
•
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Taking the Annex U approach of deducting 25% off the top of the salary band that is
recommended for trainees (not apprentices) under agenda for change. This generates
savings of about £4-5K per apprentice salary on the median of the band. It will also mean a
rise in pay should they be kept on in that post at the end of the apprentice (at the bottom of
the spinal point for that band). Please note that the deduction of 25% is only for the salary
and then you add 100% of the HCA. If you deduct 25% of the total salary and HCA it will
mean that you are potentially paying below national minimum wage for the salary alone.
Using band 1 for all apprentices, using the old level of pay. This would actually produce fewer
saving as the old band 1 level is more than the Annex U version of band 2 but will also show
a greater discrepancy and variation (and savings) if the post was previously a band 3.
Using an Apprenticeship Training Agency (ATA). ATAs recruit and employ the apprentice for
the cost of the salary and a management fee. The apprentices are the ATA’s employees but
working very much like an agency worker within the trust. There are savings to be made
because ATAs tend to pay a low salary for apprentices. It enables the circumvention of any
pay policy. This low salary is often reflected in the calibre of apprentices. If a higher salary is
insisted upon then savings will be adversely affected. As government policy currently stands
it would mean they couldn’t be claimed under the trust’s levy account because they wouldn’t
be their employees as employees of the ATA, therefore rendering this option as not viable as
it currently stands for the apprenticeship levy.
Whilst we have no examples of trusts using them the national minimum apprenticeship wage
is £3.30 ph, which, based on a 36 hour week, would be an annual salary of £6177.60. Whilst
this would represent huge savings we couldn’t recommend this as fair and it would leave a
trust open to accusations of using cheap labour. Even if the trust were lucky enough to
actually recruit someone on that wage it would certainly be difficult to retain them.
Interestingly enough this is the only example NHS Employers use on their website about
apprenticeships
Again we have no examples but a consideration could be paying the London Living Wage.
The calculation is based on the minimum amount required to live in London based on the cost
of living and is £9.40 ph. An apprentice working full time on a 36 hour week would earn an
annual salary of £17,596.80. This would generate a saving of about £8k per apprentice on a
median band 2 post
In absence of having one clear policy for all but having different pay structures amongst trusts, there
is the worry that costs will spiral and poaching might occur to attract the best apprentices.
Governance
It is early days yet in the development of apprenticeships in trusts but most of the work is being driven
by HR. Whilst that seems a logical place for it to initially sit as it is related to workforce planning and
development the danger of this approach is that it becomes HR’s ‘thing’ and any policy for change will
feel like an imposition for divisions/departments/sites unless handled collaboratively. Interestingly we
have seen no examples of the trusts breaking down their targets to division/department/site levels.
However two of the trusts have just initiated a group of senior stakeholder apprenticeship leads within
the trust based on occupational areas. This would seem a sensible way forward for engagement and
for relationship management but also has the potential for ownership of targets at a more local level
that is driven by the services’ workforce needs.
Resourcing
What is very clear is that apprenticeships need to be resourced with dedicated staff. With all
organisations, and the NHS is no different, when apprenticeships are first looked at they are given to
someone to look into it and this will always be on top of their day job. Whilst this makes sense in the
beginning the NHS Trusts are going to have a huge explosion in numbers over a short period of time
because of the impact of the levy and as a result that approach is unsustainable.
The identification of numbers of apprentices, the sourcing of quality providers, the keeping of records,
monitoring of progress and managing the digital apprenticeship service will take a lot of time and
resources. We would anticipate that an apprenticeship lead and administrator would be required at a
very minimum, even if all training was outsourced. Staff with a strong background in apprenticeships
would need to be recruited. If the trust was to deliver apprenticeships themselves this would increase,
depending on scale, with trainers as well. However, if some apprenticeships are being delivered by
the trust and income is being generated then a clear business case can be made for that investment
in resourcing.
Delivery of apprenticeships
Of the trusts that have started apprenticeships they are focussing on non-clinical existing worker
apprenticeships usually doing administration apprenticeships. These are seen as quick wins and as
these are very common apprenticeships there are many providers who can deliver these. Some
trusts have gone, or are going, through procurement processes to determine the apprenticeship
provider. In some cases they are using the apprenticeship expert for this process but if not then
consideration for the engagement of training provider should look at the following:
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The timely and overall success rates of that training provider for the areas they are
proposing to deliver on
The numbers of apprenticeships they have delivered in that area
The vocational expertise of the trainers that they use (even CVs)
Their delivery model for apprenticeships – is it workplace coaching and assessment model,
is it day release and the content of the training if applicable
The additional support mechanisms they can offer for the apprentice
Are they subcontracting delivery or do they have a direct contract to deliver apprenticeships?
– this can matter on the basis of whether they have the resources to deliver what is promised
Contact details of any employers or (if they are a subcontractor) the direct contract holder
Costs – under frameworks, the employers contribution and under standards the price of
delivery (a maximum level is set but you can negotiate the price)
The providers’ rating for employer satisfaction under FE Choices survey
Some trusts are exploring the thought of delivering apprentices themselves. This is mostly, but not
exclusively, in the clinical areas. The trusts see two reasons for this
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Quality Control – The trusts are not convinced that training providers can deliver this
apprenticeship training to the level that trusts demand or can deliver internally. The new
apprenticeship standards are designed in such a way that they recognise that many
organisations know what training their staff need and are best placed to deliver it and
therefore have designed them in such a way that allows this.
Monetary – Under the apprenticeship levy the money is agreed with a training provider to
deliver apprenticeship and then paid out of the levy. If the trust is that training provider at
least the money will remain within the NHS. With the money drawn down for delivery (much
of which they probably deliver already anyway) it will make it financially viable but also afford
savings to be made within training and development of staff budget, which might go some
way to offsetting the impact of the levy.
Another reason, that the trusts have not yet encountered, because apprenticeships are still relatively
new, is that there might not be a training provider in existence to deliver in that subject area. Training
providers tend to deliver in subject areas that volumes are assured and therefore make financial
sense. As a rule of thumb they will not deliver unless there is a cohort of ten apprentices. They will
not grow that ten; they want it on a plate and therefore will not deliver if there is any less.
Consequently there might be gaps in provision that only the internal delivery of apprenticeships will
meet.
Key messages from the emerging themes needed in the strategies
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Parallel strategies are needed for the training of existing staff as apprentices and the
recruitment of new staff as apprentices
Workforce development strategies need to be worked out in detail to clearly identify roles and
apprenticeships down to the point of profiling starts annually
Clear salary policies need to be developed and agreed for apprentices
Apprenticeship targets should be owned locally (by geographical site or occupational area)
but co-ordinated centrally
Quality controls need to be put into place in the commissioning of apprenticeship training
providers
All strategies should focus on the potential of delivering some apprenticeships internally
It needs to be resourced with staff working solely on that role that have apprenticeship
expertise. Most trusts have staff working on apprenticeships on top of their ‘day job’
Paul Marijetic, Health Apprenticeship Lead, Health Education England, north west London