The United Kingdom's government has promoted apprenticeship schemes as an effective way of giving future employees, including those in the hotel industry, hands-on experience and vital skills, but the results haven't been promising.
When rolled out in 2017, the initiative changed how companies can take on apprentices in a more economically sensible manner. At the time, it was praised by hoteliers as easier to understand and actionable, but largely was a flop with potential employees. Apprenticeship has also been beneficial to employees who choose not to assume debt from attending university and those who do not have university as an option.
The U.K. hotel industry has continued to make the most of the program. From Oct. 3-9, the sector held Hospitality Apprenticeships Week, which was aimed at teens and young adults between ages 16 and 24.
U.K. hoteliers said government and third-party career and employment organizations still promote apprenticeships, although not necessarily positions in hotels and hospitality.
Hotel member and lobbying organization UKHospitality has called for additional changes to apprenticeship schemes.
"It’s important that any new measures don’t simply replace and duplicate work already happening, so there needs to be an assessment of how best these recommendations could be implemented," UKHospitality CEO Kate Nicholls said.
Significant job vacancy rates in the U.K., notably in the hotel and hospitality industry, require "a dual approach from government in addressing both the immediate needs of the sector and future-proofing to ensure we build sustainable solutions," she added.
UKHospitality is a founding partner in Career Scope’s Hospitality Apprenticeships scheme.
Susan Bland, managing director at RBH Hospitality Management — which manages 49 hotels in the U.K. — said apprenticeship schemes were a step forward in 2017, but she worried the initiative would create apprenticeships, not jobs or careers.
Niki Fincham, RBH's group learning and development manager, said growing apprenticeships from new sources of young people is still an uphill battle.
"We tend to find that there is more interest with existing employees who want to develop and learn as a part of their current role or future career plans," she said. "We have struggled to recruit apprentices and have tried a number of campaigns to help fill hard-to-fill roles but don’t get the interest."
Initiative and Struggle
Fincham said the work required to make apprenticeships thrive has been harder since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are the occasional successes.
"[The scheme] helps the general managers with retention and to spend their levy monies in England," she said. "We did sign up to provide the Kickstart Scheme and have had one person who moved from this into full-time employment to start a leisure apprenticeship, which was a great win."
Fincham said hoteliers do not lack initiative regarding attracting employees.
“We now offer not only the more traditional hospitality programs but also offer apprenticeships in finance, sales and coaching. One we are just launching is a program geared at facilities management,” she said.
In 2023, she hopes to offer programs in data management and to formulate a customer-service apprenticeship delivered in partnership with one of RBH's existing training providers.
But adoption numbers across the board are small, though there has been a little more success in offering programs in cross-industry groups where potential hotel employees are able to learn from those in other sectors, Fincham said.
“One example [is that] we have had two ladies who moved from operations into sales roles, and both signed up for a sales apprenticeships. … Both were promoted into the sales roles they wanted, and it has helped engage the central sales teams to understand the value of apprenticeship programs,” she said.
Fincham added another major challenge is that the setup of apprenticeship schemes and their funding differs across the four nations of the United Kingdom.
“What we can offer employees in England, we cannot do the same in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The digital system, for me, is still a nightmare as our business model is not ‘traditional’,” she said.
According to the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s 2022 Local Business Survey, the proportion of micro and small businesses employing apprentices has risen from 7% in 2021 to 13% in 2022.
The report added that “of those who say they will use apprenticeships funding in the next 12 months, two-fifths say they will use the funding to employ the same number of apprentices as before (39%). Three in 10 say they will use the funding to employ more apprentices (31%).”
However, roughly a third of firms surveyed said they intend to use the available funds to train existing staff.