Looking again at the English apprenticeships, a particular piece jumped out from the L&D Practitioner apprenticeship:

Entry Requirements:
Whilst any entry requirements will be a matter for individual employers, typically an apprentice will have an area of technical, vocational or behavioural expertise in which the organisation needs others to acquire through training.

This is an interesting statement as it suggests this apprenticeship is an SME to learning practitioner conversion programme (or at least the standard has been written with this in mind).

As someone who has previously trained SMEs in instructional design, eLearning  techniques and other competency areas it is interesting that a full apprenticeship may be in place for this.  This leads to a few thoughts for the apprenticeship:

• SME conversion as an apprenticeship is overkill, especially if the 20% time rule is enforced as most people coming in from a technical expertise area will have inherent opportunity cost of their time for the organisation that goes above 80% of their existing salary.
• It may be more suitable if the expertise being sought, and converted into a learning orientated mindset, is something like graphic design, multimedia production, etc.
• As a route for people new to business the suggestion, therefore, is that L&D is a career you wouldn’t choose as a starting point.  I recently had the L&D labour market explained to me as particularly challenging for job seekers as “L&D is the nice bit of HR that everyone in HR actually wants to do” so the ignoring in the above statement of L&D as a HR specialism is an interesting one (should L&D be part of HR is of course a long running debate).  Yet the approach of the employers on this trailblazer, and perhaps the influence of aligning to CIPD membership, is that L&D remains not a career but something you can find an interest in as your career develops.  This perhaps is not a bad thing?

As the entry point to work

A challenge, and source for much criticism of the government’s apprentice reforms, has been the shift from apprenticeships being just for new/young workers to upskilling and ongoing career development for all, for example with the suggestion that too many starts are in the management area.

What you would hope many apprenticeships would actually be used for, in the current climate, are more suitable ways into professions, for young people, than a university route.  Indeed, if companies could really adopt them, rather than the huge cost of university options, the apprenticeship reforms will have been a success.  Professional bodies, by shifting certification from degrees (see the US equivalent here for L&D) to apprenticeships (through the ‘trailblazer’ standards), have become more realistic about the future prospects of their future members.  Breaking barriers to entry for any professions is of course worthwhile – as has been pointed out for elected officials this week!

Overall

So it seems we are in an interesting stage – will the L&D apprentices be adopted?  If so, will they be for new workers or converting other skill sets.  There seem to be arguments for both but I have to remain hopefully they will actually be used for people to come into the profession without the university costs (that many of use have had to accept in the past).

Having worked for a variety of organisations one thing has become clear – life choices for employees/colleagues are a balance of many factors.

Location – restricting your organisation?

The decision on where to live (or where would be acceptable to move for work) is the primary life choice that impacts on employers.  In return any employer locked by location, especially when there is no need for it in the digital workplace, restrict the talent they can access.

Break the clustering to seek talent

I recently listened to HBR Ideacast 650 that focuses on ‘talent clusters’.  I found myself disagreeing with much of this podcast.  Traditional locations were driven by logistics, for example the UK’s industrial north was driven by canals and then railways to help people come to the cities, work in ever larger mills/factories (driven by access to raw materials), etc.  The podcast argues it is important to be in one place and that real estate prices are an indicator (of demand):

And the differential for the premium spaces in places like either Wall Street or Market Street in San Francisco or Sand Hill Road or somewhere. Those premiums relative to other places are at all-time highs.

Likewise the wage differentials you see. So clearly, somebody is willing to pay and pay dearly in order to be in those environments.

There is some logic to this, but it goes beyond talent – for example, Wall Street is attractive for the microseconds it offers traders against their competition.  The podcast interviewee’s view shows legacy thinking from the employers and we are surely past email as the go to tool for distance collaboration:

And my kind of next reflection on email – and this would be true for phone calls – is that if I thought of what’s the number one destination of emails from Harvard Business School? It’s Harvard Business School.

So just because things can, you know, engage at a distance doesn’t mean that we all suddenly become untethered to place. Broadly speaking, at this point, technology has done as much to enforce the value of place as to make the world weightless and distance-less and to not have that kind of internal connection.

The above is a ridiculous statement in my eyes.  The very fact tech companies exist, with talent in Silicon Valley, production in China, distribution worldwide, etc shows that technology has untethered design, production, distribution, etc.

Trust yourself for a world of opportunities

The above is, of course, also indicative of the ‘dirty’ side of globalisation.  Costs are kept low by manipulating labour markets, taxes are kept low by manipulating geographical differences and the ‘top’ talent gets to choose to live in Silicon Valley, New York, London, Geneva or elsewhere that they decide is nice but also attractive for client meetings, time zones for client calls, etc.

What organisations have failed to do is break that tethering to place for the talent where that is a possibility, with very few employees actively allowed to collaborate from their location of choice.  A recent Fuse podcast with Rachel Hutchinson came direct from her home in the United States where she collaborates with global colleagues for her multinational employer.  However, it is fair to say she is an example of the minority worldwide.  The reality is that many roles should be free from location but management practices, particularly trust for new hires, do not seem to align with modern reality.  Indeed just this week Channel 4 have announced their planned move to Leeds, whilst good that London-obsession in the media is slightly diluted the announcement, at the same time, makes a mockery of the idea that technology driven companies (like broadcasters) have transformed their practice.

Trust your hires

Why you would not trust a new hire in a remote role smacks of undefined recruitment and a lack of clear goals and KPIs.  Something many of us will have been guilty of but avoidable if we spend sufficient time planning.  Yes, sometimes, you will be ‘fuzzy’ over boundaries and responsibility, particularly at stages of the change cycle or how VUCA your environment currently is.  This is fine – but digital working, data and evidence does not mean you need to be colocated.

eMail does play a part here – for example, is logging 10 hours a week to email admin acceptable?  It may be, but unless dealing with service desk software or shared inboxes it is difficult to know how efficiently someone is dealing with queries/emails.  The mill owner in industrial England could view his domain and have power relationships directly over employees, the modern manager needs to be much smarter about this.  For example, think about traditional remote roles like drivers and salespeople – they are out on the road but have clear targets.

The podcast idea that if you need a tech future you need to move to a talent pool is also maddening.  Did you previously move to London just for a larger pool of marketers, lawyers, etc.?  If not, do you really need to for digital?  The academic hubs of Cambridge (UK and MA.) are even mentioned – it’s not like you expect those cities to grow hugely, the whole point of universities are to develop people to move on beyond their core location:

I think it applies most to companies where technology is going to be the central thing that shapes their company’s future. If you are a senior leader and at some point senior leaders have to sort of make their belief about what the future is and act upon it. That’s what these things require. And it’s not that excellent customer service is not going to be important, and low-cost production and all those operational efficiencies. But in terms of at the margin, where am I going to be most effective in helping my company make the big choices that it needs to make? The people that are going to end up making this headquarters transfer will be those that say: “That’s the thing that I need.”

Where universities actively support their local communities away from the major pools/hubs they can lead to incubation of startups and local economy growth.  This is in part the problem highlighted by the the results of market conditions on higher education.

Talent management and “whose education is it anyway?”

Here we once more end up back at the blog’s title and the difficulties in the balance of talent management for world survival, national growth, company success and/or individual development and fulfillment.

The one thing that is for sure is that only through talent mobility can we liberate the individual to contribute to all four of these and remote work is the easiest way to achieve this, particularly with the hostility against migration that is sweeping the world.

For companies – think about what you are really asking people to do (the detail to your job descriptions) and, at least, offer the option of remote working – perhaps you will be surprised by the talent that emerges in your teams and applies for roles going forward.

My social feeds were made up by two main stories this Monday just gone:

1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on the impact of global warming of 1.5C (BBC News Article)
2. UK Government report on Apprenticeship quality.

The impact of climate is around us all to see, from the increasingly dry summers in Britain, northern european forest fires, Californian droughts, etc.  A Guardian article in response to the climate issues, “Overwhelmed by climate change? Here’s what you can do“, hints at the fact we can feel lost in the face of such disastrous change.  It is easy to feel this way, however, I’ve recently finished reading Abundance (‘The Future is Better Than You Think’) and perhaps we need to get the good stories out there more effectively?  One of the items on the Guardian list is ‘vote’ and we all need to take a collective responsibility to force politicians to include massive change (or at least roll back support for coal as in Australia) in their agendas.

Apprenticeships as a route to tackle sustainability

Apprenticeships are an opportunity here – sustainability is a considerable part of modern learning programmes (such as Design, Engineer, Construct) and needs to be embedded throughout apprenticeships.  Indeed apprenticeships’ “British values” need to be revised to be inclusive of global warming policy and commitment to change.  Unfortunately this is difficult and probably of limited impact considering Apprenticeship standards are restricted to England (not the whole UK) and launched at a time when the UK, via Brexit and financial limitations, is falling backwards on the world stage.

So, in our organisations what can we do?  There have been some good examples, for example when I was at KPMG there was a start to a, since complete, cull on plastic.  Otherwise will climate become a consulting issue, similar to Y2K or GDPR?  Personally I feel this needs to become embedded in everything we do, it needs to be a cultural piece in the same way we expect continuous learning, demonstration of values (generally in the “don’t be a dick” category),etc..  Thus we need to take on the personal responsibility for ‘greening’ our business and lives in the same way that since the ’50s we have seen a change in mentality around diversity and inclusion.

L&D departments can play an essential part here in getting people to think differently and embed innovation around energy efficiency and other potential improvements.

Ensuring apprenticeship quality

The quality criticisms are curious given the shift to ’employer led’ apprenticeships should have employers ensure quality, rather than it remaining a central government concern.  This is really account management on the employer side, tracking appropriate feedback scores and outcomes metrics to get an holistic view of the apprentice.  That so many problems have occured suggests a more systemic issue, most likely down to issues such as the enforcing of the ‘20%’ as a metric based on quantity not quality.

The bigger issue seems to be financial sustainability of apprenticeships – with FE underfunded and apparently short term seeking of quick wins in the private space (the report’s “explosion in the number of training providers”), contributing to collapse/sale of key players, eg:

Like Y2K, GDPR and other temporary buzz terms the levy-led “explosion” does not seem to be helping.  Employer providers may be the solution here but requires investment from the same companies that have criticised the levy since launch.

There increasingly feels like there needs to be an ‘all-in’ approach.  Drop ‘T-Levels’ and other routes to simplify the model – have apprenticeship versus full-time degree.  Just look at teaching for the confusing variety of routes into the professions.  There are good ideas in the report (such as “abolishing the apprentice minimum wage”) but again it comes back to employers, or it should in the Standards environment.  Can any employer realistically pay the apprentice minimum wage and look themselves in the mirror?  For a full-time role I’d suggest not, for someone who is perhaps working 50% of an FTE then maybe, I think my first role was £1.17 an hour before any kind of minimum wage and that was okay as a Saturday job in being a first step on the ladder towards some kind of experience.  Eventually I was offered the management training programme by that employer (a now defunct supermarket) but opted for university instead.

The proposed kite system for good employers (in the government statement) is more challenging, it sounds like a good idea but will no doubt add to the noise that exists around the multiple ’employer of choice’ type awards out there.  Instead, in the same way providers can be rated by employers – let providers and apprentices rate employers in an open way via the ‘Find an apprenticeship’ site or other route.