Online property training and qualifications provider, The Able Agent, has put together 10 tips for finding and retaining property apprentices to mark National Apprenticeship Week as demand reportedly increases.

According to Charlotte Jeffrey-Campbell, co-founder and director of the company, recruiting the right apprentice and keeping them is the key to success in the property sector, but finding suitable candidates is a struggle.

Charlotte Jeffrey-Campbell, Director, The Able Agent

“We are currently witnessing a huge demand for apprentices. Many agents are succession planning, and looking to ‘grow their own’ fresh and motivated staff,” says Charlotte. “However, we are also seeing real problems for agents when it comes to finding (and retaining) the right ones. There is clearly a shortage in supply of good quality apprentices today – something the industry must work to rectify.”

To support the sector in countering the well-debated recruitment and retention crisis, The Able Agent launched an apprenticeship programme in 2022. Spotting a gap in training access, with no estate agency currently offering Level 3 qualifications. The company partnered with ITEC NE, a leading training provider in the North-East of England that specialises in digital training and apprenticeships, to solve the issue.

Over 15 property apprentices have been through the training since its inception.

The Able Agent will be running a webinar on the topic on 16th February 2023 and all are welcome to view. To register, click here.

10 tips for finding the right apprentice

1. Don’t recruit when you are desperately in need of a staff member to fill a vacancy. Consider the importance of succession planning. If someone leaves, do you have somebody in place that could step into their role? When a salesperson leaves it takes – on average – three months to return to generating relevant fee income levels.
2. Consider who will be responsible for the apprentice. If you are busy and short staffed this will have an impact on any training you need to do with them.
3. Choose an apprenticeship that helps the new starter operate as a property expert as quickly as possible and who can take some of the burden of training away.
4. Don’t rely on the national apprenticeship website to help you recruit. We advise that you recruit within your own network. You have landlords and sellers who may potentially have young people in their network who would love a career in property.
5. Set a clear career goal for your apprentice and milestones of achievement. For example, completion of assignments on time, or a point where they will earn a bonus.
6. Choose an apprenticeship that combines general knowledge as well as property knowledge. To attract a variety of candidates you may need to offer a business apprenticeship rather than a property apprenticeship.
7. When recruiting, ensure that your applicants have at least a grade five in English and maths. This will ensure that their time is focused on the business and not re-sitting GCSE exams.
8. Highlight in any advert the variety of experience your new starter will gain.
9. Try and make any recruitment adverts engaging. Use social media and advertise on your website or in your office window.
10. Whilst offering an apprenticeship can mean having somebody in your business on an affordable salary, consider the option of adding bonuses to any minimum wage. To be driven to be a successful sales person they will probably be motivated by targets and income.

Madison Browne, apprentice with MP Estates in Essex, who is currently studying on The Able Agent apprenticeship programme, said: “The course has taught me so much, and it’s so rewarding to have such positive feedback from clients and colleagues. I can really see I am adding value and making a difference, and driving my career forward.”

The post How to attract and retain property apprentices appeared first on The Negotiator.

Many people looking for new jobs know they are in high demand.

Can’t get the staff

The first issue is that there is currently a severe shortage of suitably qualified staff. At the beginning of the pandemic, many staff in the property sector were made redundant, left the industry or retired and the housing market boom that followed meant that there was a huge spike in demand for qualified staff. As a consequence, many people who are looking for new jobs know that they are in high demand so they register with the recruitment agencies who will sell their services to the highest bidder rather than applying for job vacancies directly.

Many employers resent paying recruitment agency fees but during a labour shortage there is often no choice and paying a recruitment fee would be much cheaper than recruiting the wrong person or leaving your vacancy unfilled.

Narrow vision

The second issue is that too many employers have too narrow a view of the people who will fit into their organisations. They therefore discount good applicants on the grounds of age or other random factors. As a result, they miss out on many good candidates.

The third issue is that the interview process in many firms is very primitive. Many of the larger firms use sophisticated methods to screen out unsuitable candidates but too many employers are still hiring people on the basis of a sixty-minute interview, much of which is spent talking about general things that have nothing to do with assessing the candidate’s suitability for the role. A good book on interviewing techniques could be a wonderful investment or, better still, attend one of the many training courses that are available in this area.

Referencing

The fourth issue is referencing. Due to privacy laws, this is much more difficult than it used to be. Many references are so bland that they are almost entirely useless and some employers will no longer provide a reference at all. If you hit a brick wall, it is worth trying to telephone some of the candidate’s former employers as they will sometimes be less guarded than they should be. At the very least, you need to verify the candidate’s employment history and find an explanation for any unexplained gaps.

The consequences of making a recruitment mistake can be enormous. Let’s take the example of recruiting a valuer who is not up to the job. A first-class valuer might achieve results like this:

500 valuations a year (10 per week)
x 40% conversion ratio = 200 instructions
x 60% sales ratio = 120 sales
x £4,500 average fee (£300,000 x 1.5%)
= revenue of £540,000

A poor valuer might only achieve the following:

500 valuations a year (10 per week)
x 30% conversion ratio = 150 instructions
x 50% sales ratio (because they are over-valuing) = 75 sales
x £3,000 average fee (£300,000 x 1%)
= revenue of £225,000

In this example, employing the wrong valuer is costing the company £315,000 per year.

It could easily take six months to discover that your valuer is not up to the job, work through the dismissal process and find a better replacement. During this time, your business could lose £315,000 of revenue plus the wasted salary costs plus the wasted recruitment costs. This will have a catastrophic impact on your profitability. Recruiting the wrong manager can have even worse consequences as the calibre of the manager is the single most important factor in the success of an estate agency business.

Make the break

I see the consequences of these decisions on a regular basis in my work as a business sales broker. It is very common for an owner to decide to put a manager in to run their business during their retirement rather than selling it. This solution rarely works in the long-term because a salaried manager will seldom have the same drive as a business owner and even if the manager is capable, they often become resentful that they are doing all the work and someone else is getting most of the profit. As a consequence, they become disincentivised and the profits drop off, or they become greedy and start asking for a larger and larger share of the profits. Worst of all, they can become dishonest and start doing cash deals or taking money from the maintenance account.

When the business owner realises what is happening, we are often asked to sell the business but a business with a pattern of reducing trade will nearly always sell for less than a stable business, so the owner suffers another hit to their retirement fund and profit.

Many of the most successful business owners in the country have said that the value of their business is all in their staff and this is not a cliché. The issue though is that recruiting and retaining exceptional staff is not something that happens by accident, and you owe it to your business to ensure that you have all the skills necessary to recruit and retain the right people.

Adam Walker is a management consultant and business transfer agent who has specialised in the property sector for more than forty years.

www.adamjwalker.co.uk

The post Recruit with care appeared first on The Negotiator.

Two companies stood out in particular on the call. Although not directly competing they both share a similar sized operation, in similar sized city markets with similar fees and similar client demographics. Performance between the two has been broadly similar historically and yet their current results are widely different.

Regular readers will have heard me stress the importance of focusing on stock and the news that available stock is considerably down won’t surprise anyone. After such a proactive and busy marketplace, demand has outstripped supply and agencies are down as much as 40 per cent – which is a considerable margin.

Both companies had in fact enjoyed great levels of sales over recent months yet the stock for one agent was working with was now considerably lower than the other. He simply was not replacing sold stock as he needed to, this in turn is now starting to affect his ongoing pipeline yet his peer has been gaining enough instructions at healthy fees to maintain pandemic activity levels.

Learning experience

So how can two comparable businesses in two active cities be having such contrasting results?

I decided to make this into a challenge and learning experience for the other attendees on the call to decipher what was actually going on. Asking them to collectively understand what had occurred, the usual questions appeared. Average fee, conversion rates, staff experience and numbers, internet site and social media reviews etc? Watching the process was quite telling in many other ways! Telling in that the questions and answers sought were by enlarge of a reactive nature. This demonstrated much about the current mindsets of the business owners on the call. Most had been reacting to the furore of day-to-day activity themselves and were unable to see beyond the here and now.

Understanding is not always gained by looking at the results, but at the causation.

Imagine observing someone driving a car and watching the road in front of the bonnet. This works well when things are going slow but not when you are driving quickly!

Learning to read the road ahead and making pre-emptive movements is perhaps one of the hardest tasks to undertake but once you are in that position and have fought through the emergency manoeuvres then driving becomes a pleasure and the same emergency situations can be anticipated and reduced.

The simple principle

And so, it is with agencies. Sometimes the understanding is not gained by looking at the results someone is achieving but rather the causation of those results and by steering the conversation backwards, we were able to start taking a step back in time to understand what had triggered such dramatic figures.

The reality in this circumstance was perhaps a lesson for us all. Both agencies were working flat out throughout the past year yet one was clearly outshining his normal rival. How? Just applying one simple principle – consistency.

When things got busy, he took a step back and realised things were heating up. He didn’t know how busy everyone was going to get but he did realise that it would at some point cool down.

Making a brave move, he took just one member of staff and isolated her from the business and incoming enquiries. He had her purely dealing with client contact, database calling and prospecting.

He figured so long as he made enough money during the busy period to trade as normal and focussed a percentage of his existing resources looking after the client database he had been servicing for several years, by default many of these would eventually want to sell. This meant the rest of the team were all busier than usual, but he now had someone working 35-40 hours per week doing something very few agents were continuing to do. The more people they contacted the more they realised everyone else had dropped it.

So far this year he is just under 40 instructions up that came purely from this medium. That’s 40 properties he had little or no competition over and furthermore it cost him just £18,000 in extra salary.

Sometimes it’s not the market you operate in it’s the choices you make and the risks you take which make a difference…

Talk to Nathan: nathan@nathanemerson.com

The post A tale of two cities appeared first on The Negotiator.

CO2 and Covid

A good place to start would be to think about ventilation. It has been proven beyond doubt that improving ventilation reduces the transmission of Covid dramatically. In Belgium, public buildings must by law have CO2 detectors to monitor air quality and the UK government has just announced that it will be supplying 300,000 CO2 detectors for use in schools. However, the importance of ventilation has had very little coverage in the press so far.

As a business owner, you really must think about the air quality in your offices – you can improve it.

Adam Walker

I recently read an excellent article about ventilation in The New Scientist. It said that very few people catch Covid outdoors where on average the CO2 concentration is 410 parts per million. Indoors, the concentration is higher and the higher it is, the greater the risk of catching Covid.

Some of their test results were quite surprising. For example, the CO2 levels on a bus or train with the windows open were hardly raised at all but in a private car with one passenger and the windows closed, the CO2 levels increased by more than 400 per cent. In view of this, it seems ironic that the trains only have one third the number of passengers that they had before Covid whilst road traffic has already returned to pre-pandemic levels.

As a business owner, you really must think about the air quality in your offices because there are some very simple and cheap things that you can do to improve it. The first thing to do is to install a CO2 detector. We are used to buying carbon monoxide detectors but we now know that carbon dioxide is dangerous too. The detectors are very cheap and will give you a continuous reading of the CO2 levels in the office so that immediate action can be taken if they increase.

Open the windows

The second thing to ensure is that some windows are open. A couple of small high-level open windows will make an enormous difference to the air quality. If they don’t open or have been painted shut, then they need to be repaired or adapted immediately.

If opening the windows is impossible or impractical, then the alternative is to upgrade your air conditioning system. Most air conditioning systems do not draw in fresh air from outside, they just heat or cool the stale air, then recycle it continuously. When I am driving my car, I find that if I leave the air conditioning on the recycle setting, I feel myself getting drowsy within about 30 minutes. Exactly the same thing happens in an office.

Upgrading the air conditioning system will be expensive but it will prove to be an excellent investment. If you have to shut the office for ten days due to a Covid outbreak amongst your staff, the lost revenue will outweigh the cost of a new air conditioning unit several times over. Furthermore, better air quality will improve your staff’s productivity. A recent survey found that productivity increases by around nine per cent in a well-ventilated office.

“We should keep accompanied viewings to a minimum.”

Minimise contact

A second area to focus on is minimising contact with other people. There is a great deal that can be done to achieve this. For example, whilst we are allowed to do accompanied viewings again, we should still be keeping them to a minimum. Insisting that applicants to a virtual viewing before they do a real one is a very good way to achieve this. You should also try to meet the applicants at the property rather than travelling together in a car and try to get to the property five minutes early so that you can open some windows to ventilate the property before they arrive.

Another sensible precaution is to keep visitors to the office to a minimum. For example, everyone should be encouraged to sign documents electronically rather than in person. Maintenance issues should be reported by email, not in person. Finally, contractors could be asked to collect keys from an external lock box rather than coming into the office in person. You need to think about everyone who visits your office and consider whether they actually need to. Some simple changes here can reduce the number of visitors dramatically.

If you or your staff cannot avoid being in a crowded and unventilated room, then they should take every possible precaution to avoid becoming infected. Wear an FFP3-grade mask – it gives the wearer a much higher degree of protection than the surgical masks that most people use.

Learning from the pandemic

There are many other things that you can probably stop doing. The evidence shows that hand sanitiser has very little impact on infection levels yet almost every single business still has a pot next to the entrance door. Perspex screens have also been shown to be pretty useless because the infectious particles can easily travel around them. In fact, by trapping stale air in one area, they may even increase infection levels. Finally, sanitising people’s desks and the office door handles ten times a day is expensive and has been shown to have very little benefit.

It is clear now that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid for a long time to come but some simple cheap and common-sense precautions can have a real effect upon what impact Covid has on you, your staff and your business.

Adam Walker is a management consultant and business transfer agent who has specialised in the property sector for more than forty years.

www.adamjwalker.co.uk

The post Learning to live with Covid appeared first on The Negotiator.

In July’s column I dealt with things that companies are doing or not doing that have clearly got nothing to do with Covid. This month, I will deal with more subtle changes that are irritating to customers and ultimately will damage the interests of the companies that are making them. For example, my local pub has made a raft of changes all of which have made it a less pleasant place to visit. We used to book by phone. They had my number programmed into their system so that they could pretend to recognise me and say, “Hello, Mr Walker” and we could request our favourite table. Now, we must book online and we just get the table that we are given.

On arrival, a waiter or waitress would greet us, show us to our table and tell us enthusiastically about what was good on the menu today. Now, you have to order your food yourself through a stupid app. There is no banter or rapport or congratulations on your great choice of dishes – there is only the same small telephone screen that I stare at for most of my working day. Because there is no contact on arrival, there is no conversation when the food arrives so the waiters and waitresses might as well be robots. Perhaps one day soon they will be replaced by them.

There is much less opportunity for the waiting staff to encourage us to have a dessert or a coffee, so we don’t bother. And finally, because they don’t take cash anymore, it is much harder to leave a tip so we’ve stopped doing that too.

The food is still nice and the room is very pretty but, all in all, the experience of going out to dinner is much less pleasant than it used to be so we go there much less often than we used to and, when we do go, we spend maybe 25 per cent less than we used to. I am sure that other regulars feel the same way and in time this will decimate their profitability.

Lost opportunities

Exactly the same thing is now happening in estate agency. Take the initial registration process. My first boss used to tell me that registering an applicant was my opportunity to convert the applicant from someone who wanted to buy a house into someone who wanted to buy a house from me. We used to spend 10 or 15 minutes registering a good applicant, getting to know their requirements and building rapport. We also used to try hard to get a valuation on their existing property or a mortgage lead. Now, most applicants are encouraged to register online and the rapport-building and cross-selling opportunities have been lost.

An accompanied viewing was also seen as a great rapport-building and cross-selling opportunity. We would always try to get the applicant to meet us at our office so that there was an opportunity to sell them viewings on other properties and have another go at getting a valuation or a mortgage referral. The journey to the property rapport-building opportunity and most crucially of all, their feedback on the property that they saw gave us a great opportunity to refine their requirements for the future.

Now, agents are being encouraged to swap real viewings for virtual viewings which give none of these opportunities. It was estimated by one of the accompanied viewing companies that each viewing costs an average of £23. If a property needs ten viewings to sell, then the agent to their mind is wasting £230. But this is simply not true. By using the viewing to increase the profitability that the applicant will buy a property from you or to cross-sell opportunities, you will earn back the £23 many times over.

Horses for courses

I am not suggesting that we return to a golden age when all viewings were conducted on horseback. What I am saying though is that the new technology needs to be used with care. If you are dealing with a rental flat with twenty prospective tenants who want to view it, then a virtual viewing might be entirely appropriate. At the very least, you might insist that the applicants have a virtual viewing before they have a real one. However, if you are selling an expensive house to buyers who may have properties yet to sell, then a virtual viewing is almost certainly not the right way to go about it.

The way that you use all the new technology that is available will be fundamental to the success of your business.

Adam Walker is a management consultant and business transfer agent who has specialised in the property sector for more than forty years.
www.adamjwalker.co.uk

The post Keeping it real appeared first on The Negotiator.

When this starts to happen it’s not hard to find your team in a position where it all becomes a lot like hard work. And let us be honest, when things start going wrong, they really go wrong. Complaints increase, bad reviews appear, and you just cannot win. For some readers this may sound familiar. In business, as in life, things go up and down, peaks and troughs and it’s how we understand it and deal with it that counts.

A lengthy conversation with a well-respected agent recently presented an interesting problem. Despite many agents operating within a perfect storm of activity, a captive market, low interest rates, the stepped Stamp Duty holiday and a raft of people reassessing their needs, this one practitioner was not finding things working the way he expected nor the way his local competitors were, it appears, performing.

Nathan Emerson

Stock is hard to come by in many areas of the country as buyers have driven prices up in the clamour to secure new properties vainly hoping to complete before the Stamp Duty holiday subside. Sellers have benefited from prices rising by over 15 per cent in many areas during the pandemic period, and many agents have banked considerable sums in fees.

In his case, his figures have been down for the past three months – and this perplexed me, for he is an experienced agent with a good track record and no stranger to hard work.

Redundant baboon

In a market where a redundant baboon could sell a house, he was struggling. A man who had been performing well was about to utilise his untouched Bounce Back Loan to balance his cash flow. His frank admission made me realise things had probably been going wrong for a period of time.

We went through the systems, structures, applicant qualification, valuation info; and in fairness to him they were certainly adequate to achieve what he needed to do. His team, whilst fairly young, were also stable with no recent turnover of staff. They were obviously struggling to list properties and the ones they had listed they were not selling.

It is not so great when things start to deteriorate and you stop winning the business.

Considering things that evening, I started looking at his web site, his Google reviews and his social media profiles. It was then that the root problem began to materialise. I was confident I had my answer before dialling into his 08.30 team meeting the next morning; by 08.45, I was certain. Showing him my observations, I gave him some quite simple instructions for the whole team to observe.

Things are now already considerably better. His team are now achieving, and he is starting to get good properties back on the books and with motivated buyers, sales are already starting to follow.

And the problem? In a word ‘him’…

Change in demeanour

He had personally received upsetting news, and this had seen his demeanour and behaviour in the office change. With only a small team, if the control function bows to pressure and demonstrates a negative demeanour, then the whole mood of the office can change. They went through the functions without purpose and as results did not materialise, a vicious circle ensued. In months gone by his social media showed a beaming, smiling team, proud of what they had achieved. The most recent posts were somewhat different.

The morning meeting was a flat emotionless affair with limited engagement and a resigned attitude. No fight, no fire, and no enthusiasm. Observing this brought my mind back to the beginning of my career as a young inexperienced negotiator. Finding myself in a rut and watching less capable colleagues starting to outperform me, I was at a loss. Fiercely competitive by nature, I worked harder. Yet no matter how many hours I worked it still was not happening and finally my head started to go down.

An old builder client witnessing this invited me for a coffee that afternoon. Stressed, between appointments, I knocked on his door; he opened it, then slammed it in my face. I knocked again and he did the same again.

What was up with this man?

A bit shook up I knocked one more time. He opened the door and said, “Don’t come to my door if you can’t stand proud and really mean it when you smile.” Then he promptly slammed it again. Reluctantly I left.

At 3am it hit me. He was not being miserable. He was teaching me a lesson. From then on, every time I talked to clients on the phone I stood up and what is more with the biggest smile I could manage. My problems, no more.

What did I ask him to do? Well, stand up and smile of course.

Sometimes in sales it is easy to forget the infectious power of a simple smile…

Talk to Nathan at nathan@nathanemerson.co.uk

The post When you’re smiling… appeared first on The Negotiator.

Nathan Emerson

Working in the property industry for a period of time without doubt creates a breed of individuals which, if they choose to, have the requisite skills to operate in nearly every environment. They can be team players, they can be lone achievers, they can be great communicators who relish handling complaints and adversity as much as receiving praise for their efforts. In dealing with the public, stepping into their very homes they develop a confidence and intuition which is second to none. A steely determination and resolve to get things achieved and these are skills which many of us take for granted and many do not appreciate they have developed or fully utilise.

Training ground

I have seen many previous industry practitioners move into other professions and sectors, making considerable headway, purely based on the core skills they have learned in estate agency, often overtaking seasoned veterans in those professions. As a training ground we offer a level of development which many would probably pay for rather than be paid to do.

Regardless of what happens, we have opportunities.

And let’s be realistic, other than pharmaceuticals and PPE suppliers, there are not many industries which will come out of the pandemic in considerably better shape than they went into it and yet we will and overall, by quite some margin. A difficult thing to say but Coronavirus has created a lifeline to some estate agencies who may not be trading in the same way they are today had it not been for the pandemic.

Others have seen the opportunity to invest and acquire whilst others are seizing the opportunity to sell up and retire. Sales and acquisitions are happening at a level not seen for a long time and not just to the corporate buyers. Many local agencies are absorbing regional competitors.

Many more individuals have improved knowledge and learning attending unprecedented amounts of training courses, started professional qualifications, and booked examinations. As an industry we have adapted and integrated new technology, embracing video and evolved a model that may never quite go back to ‘the way it was’; proptech has shown itself to be a useful partner and allowed us to operate even through the most rigorous restrictions.

Transformation

From the trainee negotiator right through to the business owners this has been a trying period from which we are now emerging like butterflies from a chrysalis having undergone a dramatic transformation. The important thing being we do not forget the lessons we have learned.

It is however inevitable that things cannot continue at the levels they have been. We have seen dramatic surges in prices achieved as pent-up demand has been released like a tidal wave as householders seek a new lifestyle. That tidal wave will subside inevitably and hopefully it will gradually level off to a steady flow rather than dropping to a trickle.

The Government will introduce incentives to keep the housing market going in the longer term aimed at first time buyers and sustainable purchasing to help younger generations get a foothold on the ladder, evictions will start again and properties held in arrears will remerge to the market as the pursuit of unpaid rent will begin.

Regardless of what happens in the market ahead we have opportunities, we may just have to work a lot harder to uncover the nuggets within.

Speaking to numerous sales and lettings business owners every day it is clear everyone is pleased how busy they are, the need for new stock, STC pipeline stock, fees, staff, the money in the bank – the list goes on and it’s very easy to pick fault at what has not been done and what should still be done, to the need to start future proofing now and plan for a new horizon but perhaps it’s good to stop, stand back and reflect.

Not often I say this but as individuals, companies, and disciplines within the industry whether it be Sales, Lettings, Auctions, Commercial or Surveys we should for once give ourselves a well-deserved round of applause and appreciate just what we have achieved as a collective industry in such a short space of time.

Never have I been prouder of being involved in this industry than right now.

Applying the KISS principle – basically folks you are amazing…

Talk to Nathan at nathan@nathanemerson.co.uk

The post Stop, look, reflect, and celebrate! appeared first on The Negotiator.

Benefits of Apprenticeship Training

If you have experienced growth and are planning for further upturns in business, then recruiting apprentices into your workforce is a fantastic way to bring in fresh ideas, energy and diversity. Recruitment is such a risky task and hiring an apprentice is no different. However, 78 per cent of employers said that apprentices helped boost productivity, and three-quarters of employers stated that their product or service improved through the help of apprentices in their workforce. For example, a recruitment apprentice that we hired at Catch22 increased our website traffic by over 60 per cent and saved over £100k in recruitment costs by reducing the time to hire by ten days. This is the tangible impact an apprentice could bring to your business.

Invest in your current staff

Whilst there’s a perception that apprenticeships are largely for young people, the apprenticeship training can be used to reskill and upskill your current workforce. Investing in your teams right now could be just the tonic to the last year of turbulence. With many employees feeling vulnerable, developing them to support you filling skills gaps in your organisation can work well – and without doubt retention statistics positively spike when employees feel valued and invested in their futures. With over 700 different apprenticeship standards from level 2 through to level 7, you’re likely to find an apprenticeship to suit everyone in your team.

Employer incentives

Having laid out how you can use apprenticeships on new recruits and also incumbent staff, you are probably thinking ‘how much will this cost me?’, as training is often expensive. The answer is – nowhere near as much as you are imagining. If you are a business with a pay bill of over £3m p.a., then you will be paying into the Apprenticeship Levy. If you are not using this on apprenticeship training then you are basically handing this back to the Treasury. What a waste, don’t you think? If you are an SME, then how would you react if I told you that the Government will pay 95 per cent of the cost of the training? From as little as £200 you could pay for a Customer Service apprenticeship for one of your team. Incredible value for money I would say.

If you recruit an apprentice aged between 16 and 18, you receive £1000, but up until March 31st 2021, you will receive an additional £2000…

At the moment of writing, the Government have temporarily increased the Employer Incentives. Currently, if you recruit an apprentice aged between 16 and 18, you receive £1000, but up until March 31st 2021, you will receive an additional £2000 for recruiting a 16 to 24 year old, and an extra £1500 for 25 and over. That could be a whopping £3000 incentive payment that could go towards paying the costs for recruitment, uniform, travel perhaps.

Free Recruitment Service

Here at Catch22, we understand that recruiting staff can drain you of time and resource, so let us take that burden from your shoulders with our free recruitment service. Following working with you on the design and structure of the job description, we will advertise your apprenticeship vacancy, hold screening calls with applicants prior to handing over a shortlist of recommended candidates. Following your selection process, we will handle all of the admin of informing unsuccessful applicants as well as those who you have chosen. We will support you in the onboarding process and engage with direct line managers with the apprenticeship enrolment. Let Catch22 be your recruitment agency for your future talent pool.

Why Catch22?

We aren’t your normal training provider. We’re not obsessed with enrolling thousands of apprentices – but instead are focused on making the biggest impact with like-minded employers. Supporting businesses to design a programme that suits their needs, vision and values is what we do best and what we enjoy the most. We look to create social mobility in communities, creating opportunities for employment and supporting businesses to meet their potential.

The question you should ask yourself is not can you afford an apprentice, but can you afford not to?

Get in touch with us for an informal conversation about how Catch22 could help your business at: apprenticeship@catch-22.org.uk

The post Sourcing an apprentice appeared first on The Negotiator.