This year’s Modern Apprenticeship Week is an opportunity to celebrate the success of small businesses and the apprentices they recruit. For the one in ten small businesses in Scotland recruiting apprentices (12%), they continue to be an effective way to address skills shortages and breathe new life into their workforce.
However, it is also an opportunity to reflect upon how government and industry can work together more effectively to encourage more small businesses to take on apprentices. Many small business owners rule it out as an option because they believe it isn’t right for their business, while others cannot hire apprentices due to their self-employed status.
Naturally, not all small businesses will go down the apprenticeship route. Many of the smallest businesses often lack the formal training and recruitment processes to manage apprentices. Nonetheless, there are a range of businesses that could consider apprenticeships a viable and cost-effective way to hire staff with the right support from government.
The apprenticeship system is changing and offering employers a variety of ways to get involved. They can hire traditional Modern Apprenticeships, Foundation Apprenticeships and Graduate Apprenticeships. Much of these changes will have gone unnoticed by busy small business owners grappling with the rising costs of doing business, tighter profit margins, weak consumer demand and political uncertainties.
The onus will be on Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Government to introduce practical changes which will make it easier and less costly for small businesses looking to take on apprentices. Get the system right, in other words, and small businesses will recruit more apprentices.
This short report is certainly not the final word on small businesses and the Modern Apprenticeship system in Scotland. However, if these recommendations outlined by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) were introduced, we are confident that the number of small businesses taking on apprentices would increase.