10 Resources from 2017 to help you modernise L&D Practice

Rachel Burnham writes: At the start of 2017 I picked out 10 pieces to share to help L&D professionals modernise their L&D practice, so I thought I would do something similar at the start of this year.  

This time I thought I would make the focus very firmly on practical tips and guidance to help us to develop the skills, insights and know-how needed to modernise L&D. In making my selections, I have picked out some of the concerns that have been part of my focus for the past year.  I also have been mindful of the themes which emerged from this year’s benchmarking report by Towards Maturity ‘L&D: Where are we now?’ published in November 2017.  This identifies the top barriers to having a learning culture as including:

·       Cost of set-up, development and maintenance (66%)

·       Lack of skills amongst employees to manage their own learning (65%)

·       Reluctance by line managers to encourage new ways of learning (58%)

·       Lack of skills amongst L&D staff to implement and manage technology enabled learning (53%)

·       Unreliable ICT infrastructure (52%)

As before, I hasten to add that this selection is by no means a best of 2017.  There was lots of great material produced throughout the year – this is my pick of helpful resources. I have included short videos, podcasts, infographics and of course Sketchnotes, alongside written materials.

   

1  1. ‘How to run successful Webinars to add value to your organisation’ Session: Andy Lancaster & Michelle Parry-Slater May 2017 Sketchnote: Rachel Burnham  

This is a Sketchnote I created whilst participating in Andy and Michelle’s excellent session at CIPD’s L&D Show.  The L&D Show conference this year involved a number of very practical workshops which had a ‘how-to’ focus.  This one was a practical introduction to running effective webinars and was packed full of tips and the sharing of experiences.  

    2. ‘How to produce Impactful Videos and Learning Content’ Session: Dr Mark Davies, See Learning May 2017 Sketchnote; Rachel Burnham

My second selection is also one of the Sketchnotes I created from this year’s CIPD L&D Show.  If you are interested in learning to make good quality videos using your smartphone, then Dr Mark Davies of See Learning is ‘the-person’ to get advice from.   He can be found on Twitter under @SeeLearning.  I picked up so many great tips from this session and keep referring back to this Sketchnote. 

    3.‘Apprenticeships: Loving the Levy’ CIPD Podcast 127 July 2017 (about 20 mins on apprenticeships)

In April 2017 the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced.  A lot has been written up about the Levy, what it involves, what the challenges are and more recently about the seemingly paradoxical drop in numbers registered for apprenticeships.  Out of all this material, I have picked this podcast because it shares some great stories about the value of apprenticeships both to individuals and to organisations and challenges some of the misconceptions that apprenticeships are only for young people or only for less skilled roles or only for occupations such as engineering.  It is great story-telling – the best kind – real stories of real people.

    4. ‘Bite-Sized Research on Spaced Retrieval’ Episode 5 October 2017 The Learning Scientists (11.5 mins)

This is another podcast – a new podcast to me – so thank you to Jonathan Marshall @LearningFCO for the recommendation.   This particular episode explores a piece of research into the impact of spaced retrieval on learning effectiveness – if you aren’t familiar with the terms ‘spaced learning’ and ‘retrieval practice’ and are in L&D do take the time to listen to this podcast as it explains them clearly and simply, plus why we need to know about them and be making use of them.

Plus, if you haven’t come across Jonathan before do follow him on Twitter and watch out for his very informative and thoughtful blog posts, in which he shares his learning from his work as the Head of Learning for the Diplomatic Academy.

    5. ‘The Elephant in the Room’ Paul Matthews Training Journal September 2017

I met Paul Matthews for the first time this year at the CIPD NAP conference in York, where we were both delivering sessions.  We started talking then about learning transfer – the elephant in the room, as Paul refers to it and haven’t stopped talking about this since.  Learning Transfer is about how we get learning to really impact on performance in the workplace and links to the other topics Paul has written about previously – performance consulting and informal learning.  Paul wrote this article for Training Journal in the summer, but having started writing has been about how to address learning transfer he has found unable to stop and is in the process of completing a new book on this subject.  Paul can be found on Twitter @PeopleAlchemy.

6.  ‘Digital Curation’ – 3 short videos by Mike Shaw ( 2 mins each) Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

With the increased availability of information and resources via the internet, managing this avalanche of information is an increasing challenge for professionals in all fields.  The term ‘curation’ has been borrowed from the museums and art gallery sector to describe the processes involved in finding, selecting, making sense and using these resources.  Mike Shaw (@MikeShawLD) created these three short videos, now available on YouTube, with Snapchat to introduce people to the idea of digital curation and to explore some of the ways that it can be used in L&D.   Mike and I have been working together over the last year on developing our curation practices and on using curation in the design of L&D programmes.  Here is a blog I wrote on the subject.

 

   7. ‘Niall and Rachel’s VR Odyssey’ blogs and recordings

In the Spring of 2017, Niall Gavin (@NiallGavinUK) and I began exploring how L&D could make use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology and we shared our learning in a series of blog posts and recorded conversations on Zoom and available on YouTube.   The improving technology in this field, its increasing popularity in the consumer market and its increased accessibility, is getting more organisations thinking about how they can make use of these technologies to support learning. The resources we produced provide a basic introduction to some of the uses of this technology in L&D.

    8. ‘LearningTechnologies: What managers really think’ GoodPractice in association with ComRes November 2017

GoodPractice has for the last few years produced a series of research reports exploring what managers real practice is around learning and how they perceive & make use of technology to meet the challenges they face in their day to day work.   This year’s research report explores their attitudes towards some of the key technologies available in workplaces to support learning and uncovers some perhaps surprising positive results in relation to managers’ views of elearning and other technologies.   The free report not only reports on the results of the research, but includes some very helpful practical and detailed takeaways for L&D professionals about how to maximise the potential of technology in organisations.   The suggestions directly address some of the barriers identified by Towards Maturity at the start of this blog.

    9.   ‘Future of technology and learning’ Report & Infographic CIPD & Towards Maturity November 2017

At about the same time that GoodPractice was producing its report into technology and learning, CIPD and Towards Maturity were also launching theirs!  This report makes use of the Towards Maturity benchmarking data, and digs in deeper to how L&D is using different technologies for different aspects of learning eg games, collaboration.  It makes a series of recommendations to help us, in L&D, become a bit more sophisticated in our thinking and practice in the use of technology to support learning eg by getting us to really think through how different learning technologies support approaches to learning such as collaboration and gamification.   

    10. #accessibilitytipoftheday Mike Osborne series of posts on Twitter

My final selection is a recommendation to check out this hashtag (ie search criteria) on Twitter for a whole array of suggestions, tips and recommendations to support improved accessibility for learning resources and digital learning.   This is a great initiative by Mike Osborne to improve awareness and action from all of us in L&D to ensure that learning opportunities are open to all and don’t exclude people.   You can find Mike on Twitter @MikeOzzy.

I have enjoyed putting this collection or curation together.  There are so many other great resources out there to tap into.  I would be keen to hear of your recommendations.

Rachel Burnham

8/1/18

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I do this through: writing & design commissions; facilitating learning to update knowhow, 1:1 and bespoke ‘train the trainer’ programmes; and the use of Sketchnoting to facilitate learning. 

Time for a health check-up for L&D?

Rachel Burnham writes: I had the pleasure this Thursday of doing my first Ignite presentation at CIPD’s Annual Conference & Exhibition.  An Ignite presentation is that tricky format, in which you deliver a five minute presentation, with 15 slides each on a timer, so that each slide is only visible for 20 seconds.  It is rather nerve-wracking!! We were asked to present on the theme of the conference ‘Embracing the New World of Work’ in relation to L&D.   I was one of 5 L&Ders presenting in this session and what a lovely mix of presentations, topics and styles we ended up with. Here is a blog version of what I said:

In my work, I help L&D professionals to be even more effective in what they do.  This conference has presented us with lots of challenges for our work as L&D professionals, if we want to enable our organisations to embrace this new world of work.   Through the conference we have been hearing about many changes that are affecting the world of work, from those that are well established such as digitalization and automation, to those that are only just beginning to make an impact, such as artificial intelligence, through the use of algorithms and chatbots.  We experience the use of alogorithms when buying online, when well known retailers make suggestions about what other purchases we might find of interest.  And increasingly we are coming into contact with chatbots who tackle our customer service queries, when interacting with banks and other online service providers.   But this is barely scratching the surface of all the very many different ways that AI can be used in the workplace.  

For example, in L&D itself organisations are beginning to use algorithms to personalize the suggestions for future learning for individual staff.  And chatbots can be used to support learning by answering learners questions and providing individual support to learners.  

  

But the changes and challenges organisations face are of course not limited to those coming from technology.  Social changes are also making an impact –  for example, Brexit is bringing us lots to get our head around in terms of workforce planning, skills development and recruitment, trading arrangements, implications for social inclusion and so. 

Sometimes, at conferences of this sort, I do confess to getting a bit fed up at continually being exhorted to ‘disrupt HR’ or at the never-ending references to working in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world.  It almost makes me want to scream!  I think this language, this ‘conference-jargon’ can be rather off-putting for many people and actually distance us, from the real challenges that these changes are bringing to the workplace.   I think my favourite of all these off-quoted sound-bites, is that the ‘future is un-evenly distributed’.    This feels much more true to me.

I work with lots of people in L&D, from lots of different sectors and sizes of organisations.   Some of whose organisations are in the midst of these kinds of changes and are working with digitalization or automation or using chatbots and social media for customer interactions and many other changes, but I also work with lots of organisations that have continued to operate with comparatively little change.  And of course the question is how long they can continue to do that?  

Some organisations choose strategies that require investment in skills and adoption of new technologies and new ways of working that lead to high productivity to produce high value in the products and services they offer.  And some chose or drift into strategies that produce low productivity and instead require cost cutting and wringing work out of stressed, long hours working, low paid, vulnerable staff or workers or ‘self-employed’ folk.

I work with L&D people and here too these differences can be found, with some working in teams that are embracing change and working out how to make change work for their organisations and others, whose approach to L&D feels very out-dated –  work primarily face to face, often knowledge-dumping, perhaps just beginning to introduce e-learning.  

But whatever our starting point is in L&D, we need to be reviewing our practice and looking at how we can better work with our organisations to enable them to ‘Embrace this New World of Work’.   So, I have come up with an 8-point checklist to help us review how ‘Fit for Purpose’ our L&D practice is.

1.  We need to understand our organisation and its business

If we want to be effective in L&D we need to really understand our organisation, how it works, how it adds value, the sector it works in and what the competition or other organisations in its field are doing.   The reason we need to understand this, is because there isn’t one right way of doing L&D - what we do in L&D needs to fit with our organisation.  This isn’t a new insight by any stretch of the imagination, but it is key to being effective in L&D and so is worth restating.  

2.  We need to be focusing not just on learning, but learning and performance

I think we need to have big eyes in L&D and by that I mean, we need to be more ambitious.  We need to focus on more than just learning, to have learning and performance as our focus.  This means taking performance consultancy seriously and looking at all the things that get in the way of people being able to do their jobs effectively.   I have written about this before most recently in my blog ‘Learning and Performance Together’.

3.  We need to understand how people learn

This is at the heart of what we have to offer our organisations, a deep understanding of how people learn and of how to help people learn more effectively and change behaviours & habits.  But too often we haven’t kept up-to-date with the research into learning, have been side-tracked by learning myths or held on to old models and theories that have long-been discredited.   We need to make sure that the models, theories and approaches we are using are evidence-based and that we really understand their implications and then we need to build that into our working practices.   

For example, much of what passes as insights from neuroscience for learning at the present time is either neuromyth or very limited in value for practical purposes or actually from cognitive psychology. We often give insufficient attention to the time needed for practice to develop skills and fail to use the insights of spaced practice.  We need to be much clearer about what we are using and why.

We also really, really need to stop using learning styles and other models that have been discredited.   Let’s chuck out that chintz!

4.  We need to have strategies for keeping ourselves up-to-date

With all this change around, we need to make sure that we are really good learners ourselves and have strategies in place for keeping ourselves up-to-date. 

This means that we need to make full use of Continuous Professional Development and reflective working practices as a starting point.  I also think we need to be develop our skills in managing information and Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) or personal curation practice – but that is another blog!

A good stepping stone is to make sure you have a really effective network, both in person and online, that can help you learn and stay in touch with new developments – this is often referred to as a Personal Learning Network.  I have blogged about the value of this before ‘Networking: What is aPersonal Learning Network?’. 

I like the image of a spider in their web - if anything touches that web, it transmits through vibrations in the web directly to the spider and immediately alerts them to what is happening.  And that is what our networks should do for us too!   But we also need to contribute to our networks and share our experiences, so that we add to the collective wisdom available. We need to contribute our small piece and not just take.

5.  We need to sift out what is relevant in developments for our own organisation

In the context of all this change, with the continuous development of new technologies and approaches, it is easy for us in L&D to feel a bit over-whelmed.  And even to feel that if we aren’t making use of all of these developments, then we must be falling down on the job! Sometimes we can hear the message that we ‘ought’ to be trying this or doing that in the output from conferences, exhibitions and social media.

We don’t need to try everything – and there is so much going on that we can’t try out everything!  What we do need to do is be alert and aware and sift out what in new developments might be relevant and useful to our own organisation.  This is where having that deep understanding of our own organisation combines with having a great network, so that we can focus on those developments that can potential might add value to our own organisation and improve performance.

The image I have been using this year, is that we need in L&D to be neither an ostrich with our head in the sand, ignoring developments, nor a magpie, chasing after all that is new and shiny!  Instead we need to find a third way and sift out those few things that may have particular relevance to our own organisation.

6.  We need to make use of pilots to test out developments and learn from them

Once we have identified a development that is worth pursuing for our organisation and done our initial fact finding and research, if it looks relevant, why not run a small pilot?   It is often worth testing out new developments in a small, fast pilot to see how they work in practice and to learn in a relatively low risk way.   A starting point, might be trialing it within the L&D team or with a supportive line manager and their team. 

7.  We need to invest in managers

Effective managers are key to effective organisations.   If we want to raise productivity in our organisations this means tackling the development of managers and particularly first-line managers.    Raising productivity is a key issue in the UK and we need to be paying much more attention to developing confident and effective line managers.   As well as developing skills in people management, we also need to develop effective relationships between L&D and line managers, if we, in L&D want to really make an impact.    For example, line managers are key to the effective transfer of learning or to building learning into work. 

8.  We need to make good use of the Apprenticeship Levy

Finally, when resources are tight in organisations and particularly for L&D, we need to make sure that we make full use of the opportunities provided by the Apprenticeship Levy.  And this is whether we are working in a large organisation contributing to the Levy or in a small organisation, who isn’t required to contribute but who can draw from it. 

So, this is my 8-point checklist to get us thinking about how fit our organisation’s L&D is for purpose.    Why not use it for your own reflections and identify where you can further improve your practice?  I know I will.

Rachel Burnham

12 November 2017

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Skills, training and the language we use - the big divide?

Rachel Burnham writes: I feel incredibly privileged because I love my work - both the paid work I do as an L&D Consultant, working for myself and the work I do as a volunteer, whether for L&D Connect or CIPD Manchester, as a member of the branch committee and their Public Policy Adviser.  I get to do some really interesting things for CIPD Manchester that I wouldn’t get to do otherwise, such as contributing to organising the recent ‘Shape the Future’ event for CIPD.  As Public Policy Adviser I have got involved in facilitating focus groups and meetings around a very diverse range of topics from dispute resolution,  the National Living Wage, the Northern Powerhouse, to new Psychoactive Substances and EU Migration policy – and look out for exciting news in the early autumn on a new venture ‘The Big Conversation on Families, Parents and the Workplace’.

It is fascinating to be working and making things happen both in the L&D field and also in the wider HR Public Policy field.  I get to work on some different topics and also on some areas that are common to both fields.  It has broadened my perspective on the HR field – it helps me to understand more practically the connections between L&D and other aspects of HR – this has been particularly true of the recent work on EU migration policy that has impacts across many aspects of HR from recruitment, to talent management, skills development, job design & use of automation.    I get to work in different sorts of ways and with different networks of people.   And I notice some interesting differences between the L&D agenda and the Public Policy agenda and also the language that is used, even when we are discussing topics we have in common. 

For example, in the L&D world there is a lot of focus on modern workplace learning with emphasis on how we can make effective use of digital technologies and also social learning, so that learning can be much more responsive to the needs of organisations and individuals, with individuals being able to access learning as and when they need it.  And often that learning may be through access to resources, so actually may be more about performance support.  

Of course, in very many organisations face to face learning still plays a huge and important part, whether that is on its own or as part of wider blended learning programmes.   Amongst these programmes will be ones leading to qualifications – some of these qualifications may be quite sector specific eg medical qualifications, qualifications for the financial services sector or job specific eg health and safety qualifications. However, in many organisations, much learning will be uncertified particularly informal learning – without that in any way that limiting its value or effectiveness.  Indeed, it is hard to imagine how much of our learning can be certified given the rate of learning needed to be effective in some roles or the degree of organisation and job-specificity often required.

Yet in the public policy area, when skills are being discussed then the focus is largely on qualifications and the language is mostly that of training.   This feels more limited, dated and also rather confusing – I find myself wondering when a report refers to the amount spent on training or the amount of training being ‘received’ by employees – just what is being included within those figures – qualifications almost certainly, all face to face training probably, e-learning possibly, informal & social learning - it really isn’t clear, but I suspect it isn’t, learner led development – probably not.  

I was delighted to see that the recent CIPD report on skills, which I have previously blogged about, was consciously moving away from just looking at qualifications. Informal learning is mentioned (briefly), but the focus is still on this formal end of learning and the language is still largely that of training.  So there is a gap between what is happening, at least in some organisations, around L&D and the way this is being examined at a national policy level.

But I think that L&D also needs to get more engaged with the whole skills agenda and public policy area too.   It is interesting what is happening with the introduction this year of the Apprenticeship Levy, as this is impacting on so many organisations, some of whom have already got experience of apprenticeships, but there are also many organisations that haven’t previously had experience in this area.  Some people in L&D have been getting their heads around the Levy and have thrown themselves into working with it for the benefit of their organisations.  In many organisations, responsibility for apprenticeships is a niche L&D role or part of talent management role or part of a wider HR responsibility.  It feels like there hasn’t been as much discussion of the Apprenticeship Levy and its implications within the wider L&D community as might have been expected for such a broad initiative with such potentially huge impact.   The recent round of CIPD Leaders in Learning events which focused on the Apprenticeship Levy had a lower turnout than previous sessions.  In previous years I have noticed a very different mix of participants at events with a skills agenda focus, to those events with a broader L&D focus. 

So there are different groups of people engaged in discussion and action in relation to ‘Adult Training’ or the Skills Agenda field to those focusing on L&D within organisations and some different conversations taking place, with different focuses and different language.  Diversity of views can be a source of strength and bring new ideas to the fore, but if there is a lack of dialogue, if there is an absence of challenge around the differences in focus between the fields, if different language grows up and goes unexplored, then there are also big risks.

For example, are we focusing on the right things in our national statistics in this area; to what extent does it matter if the overall amount spent on workforce development is decreasing if we are spending it more effectively (if we are?); if only some aspects of workforce development are being measured, will these be focused on in policy discussions to the neglect of possibly more fruitful areas; and so on.  I worry that we aren’t talking enough together and as a result the national policy agenda is missing out on more recent thinking and practice from L&D. 

But what do you think?

Rachel Burnham



23/7/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 


Image from Pixabay

Collection of Sketchnotes from CIPD NAP Conference 2017

Rachel Burnham writes: I was fortunate enough to participate in the CIPD NAP conference over the past weekend, 9-10^th June 2017, in York.  This conference is organised annually by a team of volunteers from the northern branches of the CIPD and is one of the friendliest HR conferences around. 

The theme this year was ‘Enhancing the Employee Experience’ and a wide range of topics were explored under this heading from Emotion at work, through diversity & inclusion, to Personal Learning Networks and Apprenticeships.  

The highlight for me was the keynote given by Peter Cheese, CIPD’s CEO, who spoke passionately about the contribution of HR to organisations and society, in the context of the new Professional Standards that CIPD is currently in the process of developing.  I have heard Peter Cheese speak on many occasions, but I have never heard him speak so powerfully and movingly.  It made me proud to work in HR. 

Here are my Sketchnotes from this event, including Peter Cheese’s session.  

Rachel Burnham



12/6/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Apprenticeships and the Levy – Opportunity & Challenge

Rachel Burnham writes: As you are probably aware, from April 2017, the government will be introducing the apprenticeship levy on all employers with a pay bill of more than £3 million per year.  The levy, set at 0.5% of the pay bill, will be paid through PAYE.  Employers, including those too small to pay the levy, will then be able to access funding to pay for apprenticeships through the new digital apprenticeship service.

Back in June 2016, CIPD reported on employer views of the proposals for the apprenticeship levy – my take on the research is broadly that the more employers knew about the proposals for the levy, the less they liked them!   However, the government is pressing ahead, so employers need to work out how to get the most benefit out of this new system for their organisation and for apprentices.

It was in that spirit that CIPD Manchester’s Public Policy Panel last week hosted three employers all with existing apprenticeship schemes to come and share this experience, plus their thoughts on the levy, with other HR professionals.   Our speakers were from Eurocell, AO and the General Medical Council and included two schemes with 25-30 apprentices and one scheme with 5 apprentices from the private and charitable sectors.   The range of apprenticeships offered was very varied from including engineering, HR, IT and digital marketing.  Here is a link to the Storify from that evening.

Effective apprenticeship programmes

Our speakers identified a number of elements that contributed to an effective apprenticeship programme.  These included:

·       A genuine business need for apprentices

·       Senior management sponsorship of the programme and local line management sponsorship of individual apprentices.  Line managers will benefit from preparation, clarifying their expectations of the apprentice role and how they will need to work with them, plus acknowledgement that they will need to invest time in supporting the apprentice.

·       A responsibly agreed salary.  

·       Good quality, relevant training and long term development opportunities.   This training could be provided internally with suitable accreditation or delivered by an external provider depending upon what best meets the needs of the organisation and fits within the Apprenticeship Levy requirements. One of the speakers identified that they needed to constantly work with their external training providers to ensure that the training meets their needs. It is essential that the training provided meets both the needs of the organisation and also the individual’s needs – this can mean tailoring the length of a programme to ensure that the pace fits these needs.  One of the employers was exploring the possibility of introducing degree level apprenticeships to meet organisational requirements, but also to stretch and reward individuals appropriately.

·       We heard about a range of exciting component parts of the programmes such as: including achieving a Duke of Edinburgh award; opportunities for volunteering/charity work; parents evenings to share with parents what the programme involves and the benefits to participants; and  possibilities for international links where organisations have international operations eg with Germany.   All of which help to build the confidence of apprenticeships, provide opportunities for team working and increasing responsibility plus times to celebrate these gains.

Benefits from apprenticeships

All the employers described the growth in confidence and skills shown by the apprentices – one said you can see them striding out across the workplace ‘with a sense of purpose’. 

But they also identified the benefits to the organisation particularly in relation to providing access to high quality candidates for junior roles. For example, one of the organisations described how the apprentices, when applying for roles within the organisation on completion of their apprenticeship, scored much higher than candidates from other sources and described how they had moved into much higher level roles than expected.  Another of the employers identified one of the challenges as being to remember that they are apprentices because they start adding value so quickly within their teams and they need to have their time protected to enable them to have the time to complete all their studies as well as their work.

Thoughts on the Levy

From the discussions at the session there are many different ways that organisations are approaching the levy:

·       For some it is business as usual – the organisation has already decided to invest in apprenticeships and nothing will fundamentally change.

·       Some organisations have considered the levy, but have decided not to bother with it and just pay the levy, seeing it as another tax, even though as a large organisation this will leave them with a large bill.  In an example shared during the meeting, the levy had been studied, but the organisation decided that it was not worthwhile them putting things in place to enable them to make use of the funding from the Levy. Interestingly, prior to the meeting, I had assumed that this was more likely to be the approach of small organisations, but this seems to be the case also for some large organisations.

·       Some organisations fear that the apprenticeship levy will absorb all the resources for training and that therefore all funding for learning & development will need to come through programmes supported by the Levy.  This view wasn’t expressed in the meeting, but I have heard it elsewhere.

·       A number of organisations in the meeting were identifying that they will only be able to spend a proportion (eg two thirds) of the funding for apprentices that their organisation will be eligible for, because not all costs are recoverable such as apprentice salaries.

·       Some organisations were still working out how they will approach the Levy and how this will affect their work with apprentices.

·       One of the opportunities touched on is the potential for organisations to work together  to deliver apprenticeships eg organisations from a similar sector either in partnership or perhaps a larger organisation opening up their scheme in some way to smaller organisations in the same field or within their supply chain particularly where this is in a specialist field.

Challenges with the Levy

One of the key challenges with the Levy for organisations is that there is still a lot of uncertainty about how various elements will work in practice.  A particular aspect of this is whether the relevant qualification frameworks for your organisation will be available in time – a large number of new frameworks are being developed quite quickly and there are some questions about whether the process for developing these has been sufficiently robust to ensure that each framework meets the needs of a sector and not just an individual organisation.   One of the employers shared how the Level 4 qualification that some of their apprentices need to move on to during the year is unlikely to be ready in time and what the implications of this are for those individuals.

A different issue was the opportunity to have apprenticeships not just for young people, but also for people of all ages, including apprenticeships to support career changes later in life.  Two specific challenges were mentioned in this connection, paying the right level of salary for this to be feasible and the issue of English and Maths qualifications in the final assessment process - older apprentices qualifications may be regarded as earned too long ago to be counted, meaning they may need to requalify in order to complete the apprenticeship.  This will need to be handled sensitively in order for this not to become a barrier.


The overall public perception of apprenticeships was discussed and whether the branding of apprenticeships needs to be changed or just our perceptions – the parents evenings mentioned previously and similar events could play a part in this.   Interestingly one of the employers describes their apprenticeship work under the banner of ‘emerging talent’, whilst other people suggested a broader skills development or grassroots programme as better labels.

Finally, we touched on a specific challenge in the public sector following on from the requirement placed by the government to have 2.3% of staff as apprentices, year on year.  This may contradict the advice that apprenticeships are most effective when they meet a real need within the organisation. 

There are clearly a great many benefits to be gained from a positive engagement with apprenticeships both for organisations and for individual apprenticeships.  However, there are many challenges to making the Apprenticeship Levy work both for individual organisations and in terms of its overall impact on the UK workforce and economy.   We are only at the start of identifying the what these challenges are, never mind finding the answers.

What issues has your organisation identified with the Levy?  How prepared is your organisation for April 2017?  Why not share your thoughts on this topic?

Rachel Burnham

12/12/16

Rachel is CIPD Manchester’s Public Policy Adviser in a voluntary capacity and is the Director of Burnham L&D Consultancy.

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.