A recent survey conducted by IDR suggests that more organisations are having difficulties recruiting apprentices. On the other hand, recruitment difficulties among graduates have eased, and so have retention problems across both apprentices and graduates.

Worsening recruitment challenges for apprentices

In spring, IDR conducted research about the state of recruitment among apprentices, covering schemes at intermediate, advanced, higher and degree level. Our research shows that recruitment difficulties have worsened for apprentice roles, with the proportion of employers citing problems recruiting apprentices increasing considerably, from 28% in 2022, to 42% this year. Furthermore, some 17% of firms saw a drop in apprentice intake over the last 12 months, compared to just 6% of organisations citing a decline in graduate intake.

 At the same time, graduate recruitment pressures look to have remained muted, with the 64% of respondents that stated recruitment was ‘not a problem’ in 2022 increasing to 66% in this year’s survey. Just 30% considered recruiting graduates to be ‘fairly difficult’ and 3% of organisations considered it ‘very difficult’.  

In order to improve their ability to recruit staff, some organisations have implemented incentives to improve their reward packages. Somewhat paradoxically, while more organisations have had issues recruiting apprentices than graduates, just one organisation offers apprentices recruitment incentives to offset these issues (in the form of a £3,000 signing bonus). On the other hand, for graduates, over a quarter of organisations (26%) offer to pay graduates’ student fees in full. A further 27% offer incentives such as ‘golden hellos’ to attract candidates.

A potential reason for the absence of apprentice incentives compared to those offered to graduates is the higher competition among organisations for graduates, often for management roles. By contrast, for apprentices, the training offered as part of apprentice schemes, and the usually rapid rise in pay during and on completion of training is most likely seen as an incentive in itself, especially for candidates who are often younger than graduates.

Few retention problems

Most respondents (76%) reported that retaining apprentices has not been a problem in their organisation over the past 12 months. In addition, 82% said that the majority of their apprentices remain with the organisation after completing their training, with just 4% leaving the organisation altogether.

Almost three-quarters (72%) of organisations said that retaining graduates was ‘not a problem’ with respondents stating that between 90% and 100% of graduates completed their training in full. The most common reasons cited by organisations for graduates leaving training programmes early were employees pursuing an alternative career or finding a more attractive offer at a different firm.

The relative rarity of retention problems among apprentices and graduates is the likely reason why organisations have moved away from offering incentives to these staff to stay on. The proportion of organisations offering retention incentives to apprentices reduced from 12% in 2022 to 3% in 2023. While this significant drop in the use of incentives could be due to sample variation (with just a quarter of respondents to the 2022 survey also participating in the 2023 study), for graduates, the proportion of organisations offering retention incentives (such as bonuses on completion of training) reduced by a smaller extent, from 16% in 2022 to 12% in 2023.