Terry Hodgetts, Director of Corporate Client Solutions, emphasises the vital role of university–employer engagement. He highlights how Aptem has supported Aston University through a user-friendly system promoting transparency and through powerful reporting tools, enabling effective apprenticeship management.
Video transcript:
The first piece of advice I give to anybody looking for an apprenticeship management system is to be very, very clear on what the employer experience is that you want to deliver. I think a lot of universities miss that question, miss that point. They tend to react naturally, in dealing at a student by student level because that’s what universities know. That’s the way we’ve grown up. That’s the way they’ve developed.
But if I look at what we’re doing with apprenticeships, every employer relationship is a significant relationship. Every one of them is strategic. Every one of them is, to some extent, a critical part of that employer’s talent strategy. And every one of them represents a significant income stream and a long-term relationship for the university.
So I would always argue the starting point is, think about the employer relationship and think about how you’re going to serve that employer within the context of apprenticeship and therefore being able to provide dashboard information, having up to date information, having a system that is transparent and easy to use and intuitive for the employer so that they can engage in this process is absolutely critical. We’ve had a lot of feedback from the more advanced apprenticeship employers that we’re dealing with as to how pleased they are with Aptem with the ease of use, with the information that is provides. And yes, being honest with some employers, Aptem provides us with a stick that we’re able to use in a sort of polite, assertive coaching way to help our employers stay on top of these issues.
We’re currently working with just shy of 500 employers. This ranges from, there are certain employers that have very large numbers of apprentices on the programme, that we’ve got very detailed relationships with, that we’re meeting with on as much as a fortnightly basis in some cases. At the other end we’ve got quite a few small businesses with one apprentice on programme that might never have another apprentice for the next 20-30 years.
Clearly, different employers demand different levels of relationships, have different levels of expectation. What’s really valuable for us is that what we have in the Aptem system is consistent reporting, consistent data structures, a coherent, visible standard that every employer has access to, that’s telling them, this is your apprentice’s progress here. Here is what’s happening with them. They can see the dashboards. We are applying the same process for everybody in terms of the way tripartite reviews are running. So at the individual apprentice level, the experience should be entirely consistent, whether they’re working for one of the biggest global employers with thousands of apprentices up and down the county, or whether they’re working for a new start up that’s using levy funding just to get started and get going.
Beyond that, the ability with the dashboard system to support particularly those larger employers where we’re having employer review meetings, where we’re not looking at an apprentice’s journey, but we’re looing across the piece, multiple apprentices, potentially multiple programmes, different start dates and all the rest of it. Having one dashboard, we can look at, having one picture that summarises the process, and then enabling us to drill down very quickly, manage by exception, identify the issues and deal proactively with those issues is really very valuable. So the fact we’ve got this live data available, that’s always completely up to date, that’s always the latest picture, that enables us to keep the employers up to date, to hold them to account, to work with the employers, to hold the apprentices to account, and make sure the apprentices are doing their piece and for the employers and the apprentices to hold us to account, so it’s truly a tripartite relationship, is enormously valuable.
What we’d do without it, I’m not exactly sure because if I think back to previously with paper based systems and things stored on Box somewhere in the Cloud, we can never find anything. And different programmes using different standards, different formats, different templates. At this stage, with the scale that we’re at, that would just be impossible.
