Campaign urges SMEs to take on more apprentices

A new campaign is underway to encourage greater numbers of small and medium sized employers in the UK to take on apprentices.  

SMEs account for more than 99% of Britain’s businesses, but according to latest government figures for England, only 37% of them employ apprentices – down from 40% in 2021/22.  

To address this situation, Edge Foundation, an independent education charity, has launched Apprenticeships Work – a campaign promoting the benefits of apprentice programmes and highlighting initiatives that are already supporting SMEs.  

Removing barriers to success  

Edge also calls for the removal of obstacles which SMEs say are stopping them from engaging with the apprenticeship system. 

Among those barriers is the administrative work involved in apprentice recruitment and ongoing learner management. Smaller businesses don’t tend to have their own HR departments so the whole process can be onerous for employers who are short of time and resources, studies have shown.  

In fact, previous research by FSB, the Federation of Small Businesses, found that a third of smaller employers who currently have one apprentice on their books might be persuaded to take on more if there were less admin and paperwork.  

How Onefile can help SMEs  

Employer size shouldn’t be a barrier to successful apprenticeship delivery, so we at Onefile fully support any measures which encourage more SMEs to embrace apprentice training.  

As the leading learner management platform, we assist employers of all shapes and sizes at every stage of their apprentice’s learning journey – right from onboarding through to end point assessment and completion.  

Our unified platform with inbuilt AI has been designed to help all employers, regardless of their turnover and staff numbers, hit the ground running – streamlining workflow, unlocking funding and improving completion rates. Onefile’s accurate data inputting and calculation tool also does a great job keeping SMEs compliant with the funding rules – without the burden of time-consuming admin.  

Apprenticeships Work’s campaign partners  

Now in its 20th year, Edge is joined in its campaign aims by several prominent partners, including REC, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, FSB, and AELP the Association of Employment and Learning Providers. Also onboard with Apprenticeships Work are Specsavers, the Co-op, City and Guilds, the 5% Club and the Association of Apprentices.  

To explore how skills training opportunities could be increased – and how SME apprenticeships made more effective, Edge recently published two reports, supported by employer polling carried out by the REC. Both studies, Chaos to Coordination and Agents of Change revealed rising demand for apprenticeship places among young people and the pressing need to reform the current system among smaller employers.  And, reports Edge, the surveys also emphasised the need to ‘create a ‘one-stop’ apprenticeship application system and to support SMEs through apprenticeship brokerage services and sector-specific tailored advice.’  

Supporting the campaign, the FSB has said it would like to see targets set to increase the number of apprenticeship starts in small businesses, year on year, to create some accountability and measure the success of any policies that are brought in.  

Welcoming recently introduced measures to help smaller businesses engage with apprenticeships, Tina McKenzie, the FSB’s Policy Chair, added: “We’ve been calling for an uplift in the financial incentives given to small firms when they take on an apprentice, so the employer payment of up to £2,000 for foundation apprenticeships is a welcome move, but Government should go further and implement a £3,000 incentive for small employers hiring an apprentice under 25. Almost three quarters (73%) of small employers who currently employ an apprentice say they would take on more in the future, if the £3,000 incentive was reintroduced, according to our research.”