I came across a post in my local community group this morning discussing the experiences of several young apprentices at a local company, and it's really been playing on my mind , as someone who was an apprentice myself (although I don't think I can put myself in the young apprentice category!).
I don't know the full circumstances behind everything. This is Facebook, so I'm taking it with a pinch of salt, and I obviously won't be naming the business involved or any of the people affected.
But from what I can gather, four apprentices within six months have reportedly been let go by the business, all at different stages of their apprenticeships. Reading through the comments, some suggested the number over a longer period could actually be considerably higher.
At the same time, the business is advertising for more apprentices.
According to the original post, one apprentice was waved off on a Friday and wished a good weekend, only to receive a termination letter over the weekend. It was also alleged that the company was actively interviewing new apprentices while existing apprentices were still there.
I can't verify those claims, and there will inevitably be another side to every individual employment decision.
But the discussion raised some much bigger questions for me.
As someone whose own employment ended while I was completing my apprenticeship, with a qualification I'd worked incredibly hard for suddenly feeling at risk, my heart breaks for them.
Because it isn't only about losing an income.
It's potentially losing months of progress towards something you've worked hard for. It's the uncertainty of what happens to your qualification next. And it's the effect an experience like that can have on your confidence. Building that confidence back up can be much harder than it seems.
But it also raises an important question about how apprentices are treated in the workplace, and what we should actually expect from them.
There were a few comments in the Facebook discussion that made me raise my eyebrows (and also some very understandably angry ones, which I won't quote).
One of the recurring themes was that, despite being apprentices and therefore still learning, they were reportedly being given considerable workplace responsibility, including things such as opening and closing the premises and carrying out errands and favours.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Being trusted with increasing responsibility can be an important part of an apprenticeship. But responsibility needs to grow alongside training.
One comment particularly stood out to me. An apprentice described feeling as though they hadn't always been shown what to do but were still expected to know how to do it, essentially being “thrown in”.
There's an important distinction between giving somebody the opportunity to become independent and simply expecting independence from somebody who is still learning.
An apprentice isn't a finished employee. That's the entire point.
If you're employing somebody through an apprenticeship, there will be things they don't know. They'll ask questions. They'll probably make mistakes. There will be gaps in their knowledge.
The aim should be to provide the training and experience that means those gaps gradually become smaller as the apprentice becomes increasingly capable and confident.
Independence is the outcome of good training, not the requirement for receiving it.
Another part of the discussion that bothered me was a comment from one apprentice who described asking other people for help and being told they were “relying on other people too much”.
Now, there's obviously a balance here.
If somebody has been properly trained in a task, has completed it successfully numerous times and still refuses to attempt it without somebody sitting beside them, it's fair that an employer might want to address that.But asking for help isn't automatically dependence, especially when you're an apprentice.
Even experienced employees ask questions. They speak to colleagues, research and double-check things before making decisions they're unsure about. Knowing when you need help is a professional skill in itself.
Creating an environment where an apprentice becomes frightened to ask doesn't make them more independent. It makes them anxious, unsure and potentially more likely to make a mistake because they're afraid to admit they don't know something.
And that isn't something any decent employer should want.
One of the best ways to learn is by actually doing the job. Nobody wants to spend their entire apprenticeship making tea and watching somebody else work.
But there's a difference between being trusted with responsibility because you've gained enough experience and have been prepared for it, and simply being given a task because somebody needs it doing.
If you're trusting an apprentice to open and close a workplace alone, deal with customers, complete important tasks and work independently, that suggests a certain level of trust in their capabilities.
If that same apprentice is simultaneously being criticised for not knowing things they haven't been properly taught, there's a disconnect between the responsibility being placed on them and the support being provided around it.
Responsibility should increase throughout an apprenticeship.
But knowledge, confidence and support need to grow alongside it.
Another important topic raised in the discussion was feedback, or, according to some of the accounts being shared, a lack of it.
One apprentice said she was wished a good weekend on Friday and then received notification over the weekend that her employment had been terminated.
In the comments, she also said she believed her contract allowed the employer to end her employment at any time. I haven't seen the contract, so I can't comment on what it actually says or on the legal position surrounding her dismissal. Nor do I know what conversations may have taken place behind the scenes.
But I'm more interested in what happens before an apprenticeship reaches the point of ending.
If a business has legitimate concerns about an apprentice's performance, when should the apprentice know about them?
Surely the answer is: while there's still enough time to do something about it.
This part struck particularly close to home for me.
Towards the end of my own employment, I remember being told: “At some point as a business, we have to say enough is enough.” I remember thinking afterwards: Enough of what?
If an employer has reached “enough”, an apprentice shouldn't be discovering for the first time that there's a serious problem.
Feedback isn't useful if it arrives as a post-mortem.
If somebody genuinely is struggling, they need to know:
-What am I doing wrong?
-What does good look like instead?
-What do I need to improve?
-What support is available to help me get there?
-When are we going to review my progress?
Apprentices shouldn't be protected from criticism. Constructive feedback is an essential part of learning.But there has to be an opportunity to actually do something with it.
You can't learn from feedback you haven't been given.
Perhaps the biggest question the discussion left me with was what happens when unsuccessful apprenticeships become a pattern.
The original post claims four apprentices have been let go within six months, while comments suggest the number over a longer period could potentially be higher. At the same time, the business is recruiting more apprentices.
Again, I can't verify those numbers, although I have seen the current advertisement for new apprentices myself. And, to be fair, sometimes apprenticeships don't work out.
There can be legitimate reasons on both sides. Someone might discover the career isn't right for them. There may be attendance, conduct or performance problems. An apprentice might repeatedly fail to meet reasonable expectations despite receiving appropriate training and support. Sometimes it just doesn't work out.
But when the same organisation repeatedly struggles to retain or develop people (and generally this can apply to all staff, not just apprentices), I think it's reasonable to start asking questions about more than the individuals themselves
-Is the recruitment process finding people who understand the role?
-Is the onboarding good enough?
-Are expectations clear?
-Who is responsible for training them, and do they actually have enough time to do it?
-Are apprentices receiving regular feedback?
-Do they feel able to ask questions?
-Are problems addressed while they're still small enough to fix?
At some point, it's worth looking at the system around the apprentice too.
Wages were another recurring theme in the discussion, and I think this deserves some nuance too.
An apprenticeship isn't simply a job. It's paid employment alongside training and the opportunity to develop skills and work towards a qualification. That's part of the trade-off.
If a business benefits from employing somebody at an apprentice rate, the other half of that arrangement matters too, the training and development. And importantly, learning is part of the apprenticeship.
Training shouldn't be regarded as an inconvenience or something an apprentice simply squeezes into their spare time around performing a full employee's workload.
If a business wants the benefits associated with employing an apprentice, it also needs to make room for the thing that makes them an apprentice in the first place, learning.
And a lower wage does not mean lower worth.
If an apprentice is expected to take on significant responsibility, work independently, know what to do without asking questions and perform to the same standard as somebody already trained and experienced, an obvious question arises,
What exactly makes this an apprenticeship?
There's another uncomfortable aspect of apprentice wages worth discussing too. During my own apprenticeship, I saw several classmates leave their employers towards the end of their qualifications or around points when their pay entitlement changed.
In some cases, there suddenly seemed to be “issues” that hadn't previously appeared to be issues.
I can't say wages were the reason those apprenticeships ended. Every situation was different and I wasn't involved in those conversations. But seeing apprentices leave and new apprentices recruited in their place did make me think about the potential for the system to be used in a way it wasn't intended.
An apprentice should be somebody you're developing. Not a permanently cheap position that you continually refill. Several commenters on the Facebook post used the phrase “cheap labour”. I can't say whether that's a fair description of this particular business.
But it raises a useful test for any employer considering taking on an apprentice,
If the apprentice wage disappeared tomorrow, would you still design the role in the same way?
Would you still recruit somebody inexperienced because you genuinely want to develop them? Or would you actually recruit somebody already trained and capable of working independently? If the answer is the latter, perhaps what the business needs isn't an apprentice.
Perhaps it needs an experienced employee, and needs to pay for one.
There's another consequence of a bad apprenticeship experience that doesn't appear on a balance sheet or employment record, confidence.
One comment on the Facebook post particularly stayed with me. Somebody responding to one of the apprentices told her,
“This is not a reflection on you or your good character.”
I really hope she takes that away from all of this. Confidence is surprisingly easy to dismantle and considerably harder to rebuild.
I know that first-hand. I was an adult apprentice with previous work and life experience, and having my employment end abruptly while a qualification I'd worked so hard for suddenly felt at risk hit me incredibly hard.
Thankfully, I had amazing tutors and a fantastic support network at college. I was able to continue my apprenticeship independently and ultimately finished with a Distinction.
But rebuilding the confidence I'd lost took considerably longer than completing the qualification itself.
For the younger apprentices involved in the situation I read about this morning, many of whom won't yet have years of work and life experience to fall back on, I really hope this doesn't define what they believe they're capable of.
When you're learning, it's very easy to assume that if the people teaching you think you should already know something, the problem must be you. Sometimes an apprentice does need to work harder, listen better, take feedback more seriously or take greater responsibility for their own development. But sometimes they simply haven't learned it yet
Those are not the same thing.
None of this means I don't believe in apprenticeships. Quite the opposite. I've seen how valuable they can be.
Some of the people I studied alongside had fantastic employers who genuinely invested in their development, and they've gone on to build brilliant careers.
An apprenticeship should be challenging. It should involve responsibility, constructive criticism, mistakes, improvement and gradually increasing independence.
And apprentices have responsibilities too. They need to show up, engage with their training, listen to feedback, make an effort to improve and take increasing ownership of their work.
But development is a two-way process. If you choose to employ an apprentice, you're not simply employing somebody to fill a vacancy. You're agreeing to help somebody learn how to fill it.
My issue isn't with apprenticeships. My issue is
-When an apprentice is recruited to fill a gap cheaply rather than to be developed.
-When learning becomes an inconvenience.
-When somebody is expected to perform at the level of an experienced employee without being given the experience to get there.
-When asking for help is treated as incompetence.
-When problems aren't communicated until it's too late to improve.
-When apprentices are repeatedly replaced rather than developed.
-And when qualifications and confidence become collateral damage.
If several apprentices repeatedly struggle in the same environment, perhaps the question shouldn't always be, “What's wrong with these apprentices?”
Perhaps occasionally it should be, “Is there anything we could be doing better?”
I don't know exactly what happened at the business being discussed in my local Facebook group, and this post isn't intended to decide who was right or wrong.
I just hope the young people involved don't allow one difficult experience to determine what they believe they're capable of. Take the useful feedback with you. Learn from the things you got wrong. Keep asking questions. Keep developing.
But don't confuse “I don't know how to do this yet” with “I'm not capable of doing this.”
There is a world of difference between the two.
And to businesses taking on apprentices: remember what you're signing up for too.
An apprentice isn't a finished employee. That's the point.