One folder in a drawer, or a strategy on the table. Same tool. Very different outcomes.
Let me start with an uncomfortable question for every HR professional reading this. If I opened your people strategy right now, the real one and not the version framed on the wall in reception, where would apprenticeships sit? Wired into how you hire, grow and keep people? Or filed three folders deep under “Early Careers”, opened once a year when someone asks about social value?
Be honest. For most organisations, it is the folder. And in my view that is one of the most expensive habits in British business. While apprenticeships sit in the corner marked “nice to have”, they are quietly becoming one of the most powerful and least-used tools an HR team has.
I have heard
them all.
Four objections come up again and again. Every one of them is real. Every one of them can be beaten.
Someone in finance pays the levy, someone in early careers runs the scheme, and the two never talk. Apprenticeships get administered instead of led. No one owns them at a strategic level, so they never behave strategically.
The most expensive myth in the building. It quietly rules out training the people you already employ, the very people you most want to keep, because everyone assumes an apprentice has to be a school leaver. They do not. Your best performer can do one.
The rules seem to change every few months, the paperwork looks heavy, and a full programme sounds like a two-year commitment you cannot plan around.
Training goes in, something vaguely positive comes out, and without a clear link to retention, capability and cost, apprenticeships lose every budget argument to the things that are easier to count.
Four barriers.
Four answers.
Give apprenticeships a senior owner. Not an administrator, a decision maker. The moment someone senior owns your apprenticeship strategy as a workforce-planning tool, it stops being “the scheme” and starts being how you build skills you would otherwise have to buy at a premium.
Change the story from “entry level” to “whole workforce”. Map apprenticeships across every level and every team, not just the front door. Use them to retrain mid-career staff, to grow your future managers, and to build the technical and digital skills you are short of. Two recent changes make this easier, and both remove friction that used to put people off.
No more separate English and maths hurdle. Since 11 February 2025, adult apprentices aged 19 and over no longer have to pass separate English and maths qualifications to complete their apprenticeship.
A shorter minimum. From August 2025, the minimum duration dropped from 12 months to 8 months, so a programme is easier to plan around.
Plan your levy like a budget, not a tax. Here is the point that should get your attention.
Measure it properly. Tie apprenticeships to three numbers any board understands.
Retention, because staff you train tend to stay longer. Capability, meaning skills built rather than bought. And cost per hire, a funded route set against the open recruitment market. Framed that way, it stops being a nice to have and becomes one of the most cost-effective lines in your people budget.
Embed it properly,
and here is what happens.
You build a supply of talent you own, rather than renting it from agencies every couple of years. You keep more of your best people, because a funded route to progress in the job they already do is a clear signal that you are investing in them. You close skills gaps in months rather than years. You turn your levy from a sunk cost into a working budget. And you become an employer more people want to join, because you are visibly building careers rather than just filling seats.
Foundation apprenticeships, introduced in 2025, come with an employer incentive of up to £2,000 for taking on young people in sectors including construction, digital, engineering and health and social care. It is a funded start on your entry-level pipeline for the employers paying attention.
You also get the social value and the community impact. But let me be honest with you. The reason to do this is not that it feels good. It is that it is a smart use of money and people. The good feeling is a bonus.
This one is
on you, HR.
You are one of the few people in your organisation who can actually fix the skills problem everyone keeps complaining about. Not recruitment. Not finance. You. You hold the strategy, the budget lever and the mandate. Right now, most HR teams are sitting on that power and not using it.
If you want a partner to help you build that, mapping it to your levy, your teams and your timelines, without jargon or a hard sell, that is the conversation I have with HR leaders every week. A good college on your doorstep is one of the most under-used allies you have. At Oaklands, it is exactly the kind of conversation we like having.
Sources & references
Figures are sourced to official guidance and the House of Commons Library. Apprenticeship funding rules are changing through 2025 and 2026, so check the current GOV.UK guidance before acting on any figure here.
- Apprenticeship starts in England in 2024/25 (353,500). House of Commons Library, “Apprenticeship statistics for England” (SN06113).
- Apprenticeships run from Level 2 to Level 7 (master’s level). GOV.UK apprenticeship guidance, “apprenticeship levels”.
- English and maths exit requirement removed for adult apprentices aged 19 and over from 11 February 2025. Department for Education (reported by FE Week).
- Minimum apprenticeship duration reduced from 12 months to 8 months from August 2025. GOV.UK, “Minimum duration of an apprenticeship”.
- Unused levy funds to expire after 12 months instead of 24 from 2026/27. HM Government, Budget 2025 (Growth and Skills Levy).
- Foundation apprenticeships and the employer incentive of up to £2,000, in sectors including construction, digital, engineering and health and social care. GOV.UK, “Foundation apprenticeship” guidance.