Developing great leaders through apprenticeships

Keeping teams motivated and productive in a disparate, more virtual working environment can be difficult. It requires great leaders who know how to boost morale and create a feeling of togetherness, no matter where their teams are based. When there’s a confident leader at the helm, teams can be more productive, happy, and conflict-free.

That’s why all good learning and development strategies will include leadership training. However, not all include leadership apprenticeship programmes. It seems that these kinds of programmes are less understood, or perhaps even forgotten. Many people believe the common myth that apprenticeship programmes are just for school leavers, when in fact a Level 6 apprenticeship is equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree, and Level 7 is equivalent to a Master’s degree. They offer brilliant opportunities for people of all ages to learn new skills and study towards a nationally recognised qualification.

For employers, they provide a way to help existing staff progress their careers within your organisation, while still doing their day job. Good people are more likely to stay within an organisation when they see a viable career path and are supported to get there. It ensures they feel valued and encourages them to keep progressing. This means that your business can retain valuable staff and the ‘corporate memory’ that they have built up. Another benefit of apprenticeship programmes is that you can work with providers to create a programme that suits your business needs, retaining control over your learning and development strategy.

How to make apprenticeship programmes part of your leadership development

You can still make use of the Apprenticeship Levy to develop managers and leaders within your organisation. To do this effectively it’s important to:

1. Review your organisational strategy to identify where the gaps are and what additional skills you require from your managers.
2. Identify the level of skill required and the standards that relate to different job roles.
3. Ensure that your managers understand the level of commitment that is required to complete an apprenticeship programme.
4. Identify the right level of training and apprenticeship provider that best understands what your business wants to achieve.

At Capita, we’ve designed apprenticeship programmes, such as Team Leader and Operations Manager to give learners the underlying knowledge and skills they need to create productive and motivated teams.

The future of work is changing, and an apprenticeship programme can help ensure that your business has managers who are skilled and capable to lead transformation in the workplace. People are never too old to start an apprenticeship programme, and at Capita we can design and deliver apprenticeship programmes that help to upskill managers to meet your businesses challenges, improving services, innovation and culture.