How BT is using apprenticeships to help tackle the digital skills gap

The pan­dem­ic has pre­sent­ed many chal­lenges for young work­ers. The major­i­ty of pan­dem­ic-induced redun­dan­cies were among those aged under 25, while oppor­tu­ni­ties for those enter­ing the work­place also declined, with the num­ber of peo­ple start­ing appren­tice­ships drop­ping by almost a fifth (19%) between May 2020 and 2021, accord­ing to fig­ures from the gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, the cir­cum­stances of the past two years have only served to high­light the impor­tance of appren­tice­ships to BT’s senior HR man­ag­er Richard Turn­er, who heads up the com­pa­ny’s appren­tice scheme.

“Our appren­tices were absolute­ly cru­cial to keep­ing the coun­try con­nect­ed [dur­ing the pan­dem­ic],” he explains. “It demon­strat­ed how crit­i­cal they are to our work­force and infra­struc­ture.”

This means that BT is increas­ing the num­ber of appren­tice­ships it offers. It plans to recruit 336 appren­tice­ships in its Sep­tem­ber 2022 intake — more than the 286 grad­u­ates it intends to hire. That is an increase on the 229 appren­tices it brought into the busi­ness in Sep­tem­ber 2021 and makes BT one of the largest employ­ers of appren­tices in the UK. 

Opportunities for apprentices on the rise

As Nation­al Appren­tice­ship Week gets under­way, there are signs that oppor­tu­ni­ties for appren­tices are improv­ing once more. There are more than 180 dif­fer­ent types of appren­tice­ship schemes to choose from, across 80 indus­try sec­tors.

The num­ber of peo­ple cur­rent­ly under­tak­ing an appren­tice­ship has also risen for the first time since the start of the pan­dem­ic, with 555,900 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in a scheme in the 2021/22 aca­d­e­m­ic year – up from 510,500 the pre­vi­ous year.

But just like uni­ver­si­ties had to move teach­ing online, com­pa­nies also had to adapt. BT did this by chang­ing the deliv­ery of its appren­tice­ship schemes to blend­ed learn­ing and using plat­forms such as Microsoft Teams. 

“We ful­ly under­stand that the expe­ri­ence has been very dif­fer­ent,” Turn­er says. “But our man­age­ment teams have been very good at sup­port­ing their appren­tices, which has made the change all the eas­i­er.”

This com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors means that “there is no bet­ter time” to be an appren­tice, accord­ing to Turn­er. “For the first time, you can hon­est­ly get start­ed in any career you’d like via an appren­tice­ship — and at any age as well,” he adds. “I think that’s a beau­ti­ful thing.”

Using apprenticeships to tackle the digital skills gap

BT offers 59 dif­fer­ent appren­tice­ships across a wide range of busi­ness func­tions, from sales to cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, data ana­lyst to char­tered man­ag­er. Turn­er believes this offers many dif­fer­ent routes for peo­ple to start their career across a busi­ness.

At BT there is a par­tic­u­lar focus on devel­op­ing IT tal­ent as the tele­coms com­pa­ny plans to accel­er­ate its deliv­ery of 5G and fibre net­works this year. Devel­op­ing appren­tices with the pre­req­ui­site skills will be an impor­tant aspect of this.

“The emerg­ing skills in the dig­i­tal and data space are in par­tic­u­lar­ly short sup­ply,” Turn­er says. “In terms of BT’s strate­gic direc­tion and growth, peo­ple with those types of skills will be absolute­ly crit­i­cal but we under­stand that they aren’t cur­rent­ly out there in the num­bers we need, ready to join. You have to build that capa­bil­i­ty and train them up, so appren­tices will be an impor­tant ele­ment of this tal­ent pipeline.”

There are also more oppor­tu­ni­ties for employ­ers to get involved in hir­ing appren­tices, with the intro­duc­tion of flexi-job appren­tice­ships last year. The new, gov­ern­ment-backed scheme allows employ­ers to hire appren­tices on short­er con­tracts, under the stan­dard 12 months. BT is cur­rent­ly explor­ing how it can deploy its own flex­i­ble appren­tice­ships.

While the Trades Union Con­gress has warned that this could lead to the exploita­tion of appren­tices, Turn­er believes there are sev­er­al pos­i­tives.

“Flexi-job appren­tice­ships were intro­duced as a way for mul­ti­ple employ­ers to take part in a sin­gle appren­tice­ship,” he says. “If they are well-struc­tured, they could allow appren­tices to pick up the best ele­ments of every employ­er and I’d real­ly wel­come a world where more busi­ness­es work togeth­er to solve skills short­ages.”

A solution to recruitment challenges?

The cur­rent tal­ent cri­sis, pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the great res­ig­na­tion, means that employ­ers from almost every sec­tor are strug­gling to fill open vacan­cies. Appren­tice­ships can be an effec­tive way of help­ing to alle­vi­ate some of these hir­ing pres­sures. 

Turn­er says: “The skill short­ages are well known and employ­ers have to see appren­tice­ships as their way out of it. It does­n’t mat­ter what indus­try or field you work in, you’re almost guar­an­teed there’s going to be an appren­tice­ship serv­ing your indus­try.”

Upskilling exist­ing staff and hir­ing more appren­tices are among the top three ways employ­ers are respond­ing to exist­ing recruit­ment chal­lenges, accord­ing to the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel and Development’s Labour Mar­ket Out­look report. As the com­pe­ti­tion and costs of hir­ing tal­ent con­tin­ues to rise, recruit­ing more appren­tices is an option that’s becom­ing “impos­si­ble to ignore” for employ­ers, accord­ing to Turn­er.

Pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for pro­gres­sion is anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment of BT’s appren­tice­ship scheme. Since the intro­duc­tion of the appren­tice­ship levy in 2017, 100 – or rough­ly a quar­ter – of those that have com­plet­ed their appren­tice­ships are now in man­age­r­i­al roles. Turn­er says: “This gen­er­a­tion of appren­tices are now start­ing to show real pro­gres­sion in their careers. It’s fan­tas­tic to see their achieve­ments.”

Turn­er will hope that these fig­ures pro­vide inspi­ra­tion for the next gen­er­a­tion of appren­tices who come through the com­pa­ny’s pro­gramme.