Sometimes it can feel almost impossible to find staff that are talented, hard working and enthusiastic about what they do. In fact there is a pool of high calibre candidates that employers overlook. We are of course talking about apprentices

You don’t have to be Alan Sugar to have valuable business and trade acumen that you can pass on to others. In exchange you get access to people who really want to carve a career for themselves both in your industry and in your organisation.

To explain the benefits of employing apprentices further we’re hosting a live webchat with Stephen Gardner, Director of Apprenticeships at the Learning and Skills Council. He’s going to be telling all about the Apprenticeship experience for both employers and apprentices and will be discussing the national Apprenticeship Awards. These enable you and your organisation to become nationally recognised for employing apprentices and supporting the future of your industry.

You will also be able to hear from apprentice employer Geoff Lloyd from Heller Machine Tools and Paul McLaren, an apprentice himself, who can tell you about the benefits he’s experienced. As it is a live webchat you’ll be able to submit all your questions to our special guests, so log-on and find out how Apprenticeships can benefit your business.

H: Host, Lis Speight
S: Stephen Gardner, Director of Apprenticeships at the Learning and Skills Council
G: Geoff Lloyd, Heller Machine Tools
P: Paul McLaren, apprentice

H: Hello and welcome to the Business Show I'm Lis Speight. Now sometimes it can feel almost impossible to that are talented, hard working and enthusiastic about what they do. In fact there is a pool of high calibre candidates that some employers often overlook. We are of course talking about apprentices, and to explain the benefits of employing apprentices I'm pleased to say we're joined today by Stephen Gardner, who is Director of Apprenticeships at the Learning and Skills Council. Welcome along Stephen, great to see you today. And we'll also be hearing from apprentice employer Geoff Lloyd from Heller Machine Tools

G: Hello

H: Welcome along Geoff, great to see you today, and also Paul McLaren on the end there who is an apprentice himself, so he's going to be telling you all about his own experience.  So welcome along to the show all of you.  But let's start off by asking Stephen a little bit about apprenticeships – it seems like quite an old-fashioned idea.  Is it still relevant do you think to businesses today?

S: It certainly is.  The ability to train the next generation of the skilled workforce is something that we always need, and apprenticeships is as relevant today as has ever been. In fact there's so many more sectors, employment sectors open to us we need a bigger apprenticeship program than we've ever had before because of all the different job roles we have

H: Ok. And apprenticeships, although they may be up and coming, there's still only 6% of employers actually offering them. You're obviously trying to encourage more employers to get into apprenticeships – what's in it for the employer?

S: Well there's so much in it that we need to spread that, as you say, currently only 6% of employers.  We know from employers that have apprentices that they find that it's, that they make really good recruits.  It's easier to recruit apprentices

H: Right

S: That once you're into the training and you're training them in the way of your own business, they're more productive so they deliver against the bottom line of the business

H: Right

S: And contrary to what people think they're actually very, very loyal, they stay with the people that trained them longer than other employees

H: So staff retention is a good point

S: It is a good point yes

H: To think about.  Now we're here to talk about the National Apprenticeship Awards 2008, Geoff Lloyd has joined us from Heller Machine Tools and your company was actually a finalist in the 2006 Apprenticeship Awards. You've been employing apprentices for years and years – what does your company actually get out of it? Why do you do it?

G: We see apprenticeships as the fundamental source of employees and the growth for our business

H: Right

G: Apprentices are able to be trained, if we select our apprentices correctly then they're the right material, they're our kind of people, and then we can develop them in our own business ideas, in their own technical development, and we can offer them a complete career within the area that they live

H: And do they stay with you generally, apprentices?

G: Very definitely, over 95% of our apprentices stay with us

H: So it's definitely worth your while as an employer then?

G: Oh absolutely

H: Investing the time and the money into them?

G: It's a big job to look after apprentices correctly, but that's what personnel is about

H: Yes

G: If you take everyone out of your business and look around, you haven't got a business, it's all about people, and apprentices are the raw material that can then be influenced by the ethics of the company the needs of the company, and then you can develop young people that just blossom as individuals and are there to lead the company in the future

H: So someone who will be leading the company in the future, no doubt, is Paul, welcome along Paul.  Now tell us a little bit about your career path. What are you actually doing and how did you get to the stage that you're at?

P: Well basically I'm currently working with BAE Systems and I'm based in Preston, currently working out of Wharton

H: And what's your actual job?

P: At the moment I'm a technical advanced engineering apprentice

H: Right

P: Currently I'm moving around the business, gaining experience in different areas of the business to help build my personality and my skills to then channel myself down one side of the business

H: And why did you decide to become an apprentice rather than say go to college? When did you actually leave your education and go into being an apprentice?

P: I actually left secondary school with 9 GCSEs

H: Right

P: And I had quite a few options open to me, and I personally made the decision of an apprenticeship because of the benefits that it actually gives, as a lot of people know you do actually earn a salary whilst getting a chance to express your ability, while getting a chance to gain hands-on experience in the industry that you are focusing

H: Yes

P: So it's a great thing to get into

H: And was that quite a difficult choice for you to make because I guess a lot of your peers, your friends were going on to college – how difficult a decision was that to make for you?

P: It was quite a difficult – I mean you get to a point where you feel a bit of pressure because you think what you're going to do next will influence the rest of your life

H: Yes

P: But it's best to take a step back and assess the situation, and I am totally happy with my decision. I got to it by assessing what I thought was best for me, where I could see myself in the future and basically the benefits, the pros and cons of each –

H: Earning money, that must make a bit of a difference

P: It does, it does yes, it helps

H: So how many years have you got to do at BAE Systems, are you sort of tied to them for a certain amount of time?

P: Yes the apprenticeship lasts between 3 ½ - 4 years,

H: Right, which is sort of a similar thing to doing a degree and actually you're going to be further along the tree because they've got to do A Levels and then do a degree so actually it's a good way of getting into employment isn't it?

P: Yes, and within the apprenticeship they do actually help you on to further education and you can continue your further education up to degree if you want to, depending what side of the business you're in and it's definitely beneficial – it's the best of both worlds

H: Ok. So Stephen how many people are choosing apprenticeships these days, is it sort of an up and coming thing? Is it becoming more popular?

S: Well there was a decline in apprenticeship numbers, but over the last 10 years the number of apprentices has doubled

H: That's good, excellent

S: It is good, yes.  There's around 180 different apprenticeship frameworks that you can go into

H: Right

S: And there's something like a quarter of a million apprentices

H: Wow

S: As we speak being trained

H: And what sort of industries? Because you traditionally think of the engineering don't you? The old apprentices you think of carpentry and things like that – what sort of industries, businesses can take apprentices on now?

S: Well the traditional industries are still strong. There are a lot of apprentices in construction and engineering and we still have trades like furriers as with the furriers training council, because they're still necessary and they're skills that we need. But there are also a lot of new job sectors so we have apprenticeships in accountancy and IT, in media and cultural and creative occupations.  There are even apprenticeships in the BBC now

H: Oh right yes

S: So there is a wide range of opportunity there through the apprenticeship program

H: And what sort of age group are you aiming at, is it more the younger person?

S: Well it – to start with it is the younger person because this is about starting off on your career, but there are also people who have maybe made their way in one career path or one sector and need to move across for various reasons. It can be that sector the employment possibilities in that sector have gone away

H: Right

S: So it's – last year we extended funding for apprenticeships so that there are now no age restrictions on it

H: Right

S: It's a program that runs from 16 to whatever age

H: Oh there's hope for me yet then isn't there? Now we've had a few of your questions in actually, you can of course send your questions in to the show if you want to ask a question to any of our panel here, if you want to know about apprenticeships, what it's like to be an apprentice, how you get on to the apprenticeship scheme, then all you have to do is to type your name and your question in the box that's on the screen, press submit and it will come through to us here in the studio and we'll try to get through as many as we can. Quite a few of you have been sending in your questions already. Chris who is an IT manager said "has the program the Apprentice made companies think more about setting up apprenticeship schemes?"  That's a bit of a hot one at the moment isn't it? What would you say to that, would you say that that's an issue, do you think people have been watching that and –

S: Well it's certainly, the word has certainly raised its profile but unfortunately the examples that you see on The Apprentice program, it's actually about a job interview, not an apprenticeship

H: Right yes

S: And so that has caused some misconceptions, but I'm all for anything that raises the profile of apprenticeships, and I'd rather have people talking about apprenticeships so we can then correct their understanding, than not hearing it, so broadly speaking I think it's positive but I don't think many of the apprentices who apply to companies change their application forms or behave in many of the ways that you saw on that program

H: Thank goodness!

S: Thank goodness indeed

H: Geoff what would you say, would you say it sort of raised the profile –

G: Yes hopefully young people watch the program The Apprentice and see that it is a show for media entertainment

H: Yes

G: And it isn't in any way representative of the young people that are taking up apprenticeships.  A lot of my colleagues say they can't imagine any of the people that appear on the Apprentice ever being offered a job

H: So what sort of people are you actually looking for then at Heller Machine Tools?

G: What we're looking for are young people that can realise from their experiences at school, and from their experiences of their limited years of life, that they are important

H: Yes

G: And that they have within them a need to understand where they're going, and what they want to do in life. We're looking for young people that have got fairly good moral standards, that feel that they want to have a good life, they want to be able to earn a living, they want to be able to look after their family, they can see their personal life in front of them, and then they can see that an apprenticeship will give them the ability to have a skill on which they can build

H: And would you rather employ apprentices, would you rather get them at that stage rather than employ somebody that's learnt the skills and maybe done a degree or something?

G: Yes, our experience, and this is just our experiences, is that if we can take the young people and the younger the better and put them through an apprenticeship, they realise by mixing with the adults within the company that there is a good way to move on and bettering themselves, and this is what it's all about, once we can get a youngster to realise that by what they're doing they will better themselves

H: Yes

G: And become a good earner of money, because money drives a lot of young people

H: Well it does these days doesn't it?

G: And their ability to have money, then they just blossom, and I said that before earlier in the program, it's getting the key for the child to blossom, and then they're on automatic, and then if they're academically capable we send them on to university, and then they come back to us on a management training program, if they're very practically capable then they will find their place within the company, and they can see that they can belong, they can earn good money, and it's as our colleague said

H: Stephen yes

G: Stephen said, the youngsters that drop out of it then they suddenly become very jealous of the ones that have gone into an apprenticeship

H: Yes

G: And an apprenticeship becomes - I wish I'd done that

H: I wish I'd done that, yes

G: And that's what we're all trying to do to encourage youngsters that this is a way they can express themselves, they can become an individual and they can grow within a company, it's not what you do because you can't do anything else

H: Yes that's right

G: It's what you do so that you can do everything else

H: Yes

G: And if youngsters realise that with apprenticeships, there is no other way

H: So Paul you've obviously learnt a lot during your time at BAE Systems – are you going to go on and do further education, do you get a qualification? How does it work?

P: Well you've got two sides, you've got your practical and your experience where you're actually finding your place in the business, your experience in different areas of the business to help build all your skills and knowledge of your business and the operations that it carries out, which you're carrying out in my scenario and day release, so one day a week I'll carry on with my further education, and this will be funded by the company

H: Right

P: Up until degree, so I – hopefully I'll find myself – I'm currently doing a HNC

H: Oh right ok

P: And hopefully I'll find myself in the next few years going on to a degree course in the section of the business which I'm then allocated to

H: Right ok. So you're going to – at the end of it then you're going to get all the work experience, plus the qualification, so you're going to be ahead of the game, ahead of your mates aren't you?

P: Yes

H: We've had a question in for you actually Paul from Phil Tagger and he says "do you believe there are good career opportunities for you in BAE once you've completed your apprenticeship?" and he's from Manchester. Do you think you'll stay with them?

P: Yes

H: That's a bit of a big question actually, I shouldn't really ask you that should I?

P: No honestly I've – before going into BAE I had a few ideas of the company and I saw it as a world leading company, not only its products but its standard of training – it was high, it was out there amongst the public at how quality the training is.  I find that there are so many different areas of the company and being an apprentice you get to experience each of them areas, you get to experience what the company is about, and all your further education is then contributing and relevant to your industry which you're going to be in

H: Yes. I suppose a fear of a lot of people if you go into an apprenticeship is that you're just going to end up making the tea and sweeping the floor, but that obviously hasn't been the case for you

P: No, that is a pre-conceived idea of some apprenticeships, but you actually get in there and the actual important of the people around you helping you, it does help a lot and I found that you can't get enough people that actually want to pass their experience on to you

H: Yes, that's nice isn't it?

P: And want to help mould you as –

H: So have you got a particular mentor that helps you in the company?

P: Yes within BAE you're allocated an assessor and mentor which will help you through each stage of your apprenticeship. They'll help you gain the knowledge that they feel you need to gain in different sections, they'll help and co-operate anything further education, any courses, any other mentoring that you may need

H: Yes

P: All to try and develop you as the best you can be

H: Yes, so you feel really supported then in the company –

P: Oh definitely

H: Which is very important.  Now we're here actually to talk about the National Apprenticeship awards – Stephen just tell us a little bit about this.  What's the idea of it, who can enter, that sort of thing?

S: Well the idea of the awards, and they're now in their 5th year, is to celebrate the excellent apprenticeship programs and the excellence of young people and adults who are on apprenticeships

H: Right

S: We think that we need to raise the profile of apprenticeships because not enough people talk about them and the benefits that they bring

H:Yes

S: And the awards that this year are taking place at the Royal Horticultural Halls

H: Oh right in central London

S: And we've moved there because the demand for places for the event outstripped supply at the Hilton where we were last year

H: So you've had a lot more entrants this year haven't you than in previous years?

S: We've had more entrants, we've had more people that want to come and see that celebration. But the idea is that we recognise the excellence in the apprenticeship schemes that employers offer, so there's an employer category and we also recognise the tremendous contribution that the winning apprentices are making to their businesses

H: Right

S: And although they're individual awards and there will be winners on the night, actually we're celebrating the achievement of all the apprentices and the contribution that they're making to all of their employers

H: Yes, gives them a bit of a boost I guess doesn't it?

S: Yes it does yes

H: So Geoff your company got down to the final few, what do you think it is about you as a company that impressed the judges?

G: I think the judges were impressed with our approach to our apprentices, and they were also impressed with the ability and the confidence of our apprentices

H: Right

G: They could see that the program that we were following was producing very capable, opinionated youngsters that were part of the company and contributing to the company, and being in engineering I think our apprentices very quickly bought over the points to the judges that engineering is so important, everything we do in life is engineering

H: Yes

G: If you want to save the world or contribute to it it's engineering, if you want to be a technician in a studio such as this, it's engineering and manufacturing and I think that impressed the judges tremendously, because as you started this interview today by turning your nose a little about the old industries, don't believe it

H: No

G: Engineering is the future, the world is engineering and the future of our world is engineering, and it's wonderful for our youngsters to go into that and realise that they can really contribute to their PC developments, to the whole world development through engineering

H: And it's not just for boys is it?

G: Pardon?

H: It's not just for boys

G: No, no it's not just for boys, we had a group of teachers come and it's worth saying this, who had been appointed to coordinate apprenticeships in the area, and there were five lady teachers and one man, and the head of the group was a lady teacher and at one stage she said to us "well could we meet some of your apprentices, we've had a good morning talking about what you do?" So I said to my colleague can you just wheel 4 or 5 apprentices in, and there were 3 boys and 1 girl, and we introduced – I said to the apprentices please introduce yourselves and they all did, and at the end Joanne was sitting there and they were about to – to introduce herself – and the lady teacher said oh you're the statutory girl are you in an engineering company?

H: Oh yes

G: And Joanne looked her in the eye and said well actually she said, I can build a precision machine tool, I'm a master of science and I'm an Olympic athlete as well

H: Wow

G: So I really don't understand what you mean by that

H: She's a good girl to employ isn't she?

G: Absolutely

H: Crikey me

G: We have lots of them and it really isn't boy or girl, it's all about brain

H: No, no there we are.  We're just about out of time actually but we've had a quick question in from Steve in London, he said "I'm 26, am I too old to start as being an apprentice?" What would you say to that Stephen?

S: No you're not. For funding purposes you would have been in the past but in 2007 we extended funding to those over the age of 25, so certainly you're not, go for it

H: There we are Steve, what more advice do you need than that? Well that's about it, we're out of time actually, so thanks to all of you who have sent in questions today ,we hope we've been of help to you. So it just remains for me to say thanks to all our guests today, Stephen Gardner, Geoff Lloyd and Paul McLaren thanks very much for making the time to come in to us

G: Pleasure

H: If you want any more information about how to become an apprentice, if you want to have a little nosey around the website you can go to the website which is www.apprenticeships.org.uk or you can phone the hotline which is 08000 150 400. Well thanks again to all the guys for coming in and we hope we've been of help for you.  Thanks for watching the Business Show, we'll see you next time. Bye bye

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