Chancellor’s Announcement
Yesterday’s announcement by the Chancellor brought us hope for hospitality, our apprentices, and the skills agenda for the UK. Rather than debating if it is enough, we have spent time contemplating what it means in its current form and what are the opportunities that hospitality businesses could be taking to retain, train and retrain their workforce. We are yet to receive the guidance by government departments on the rules of the various schemes. We will update the blog as soon as the guidance comes out.
What the announcement says so far
There are several opportunities for businesses to recruit new employees of the 16-24-year age band and retain the old ones by creating new positions. These opportunities can be combined into a clear recruitment and retention strategy to maximise the funding available.
"Kickstart scheme": six-month paid work placements for 16 to 24-year-olds on universal credit. Payments cover national minimum wage for 25 hours per week, plus national insurance, and pension contributions. We are exploring whether someone who is on a “kickstart scheme” will be able to also be put on a traineeship and/or apprenticeship to maximise development opportunities and grants available. At Umbrella Training, we will be working closely with our connections in job centres to find the best candidates for our hospitality business partners. Umbrella Employ has been successfully placing trainees and apprentices in hospitality businesses in the last 5 years and we will continue these efforts through the “Kickstart scheme”.
£1,000 grant per trainee for employers who take on new trainees aged 16-24 in England. Traineeships are shorter programmes that include a work placement. These last anything between 6 weeks and 6 months and are aiming to provide young people with a “flavour” of the industry and allow employers to understand if a trainee is a right fit. We will be designing a pre-apprenticeship training programme that fits into this category.
Apprenticeships - £2,000 grant for employers per apprentice under 25 hired, £1,500 for those over 25, for six months starting 1 August (in England). This is on top of the grants already available to businesses for 16-18’s and 19-24 with an EHC care plan. We will be supporting you with recruitment of the new apprentices through Umbrella Employ and our Umbrella Apprentices Exchange. We will also be looking to understand rules further and see if any of your apprentices/employees who were made redundant can be brought back under this scheme.
A one-off £1000 payment to employers for every furloughed employee retained to the end of January 2021 – we are exploring whether people returned from furlough can apply for apprenticeships and be funded under that scheme.
We are looking forward to exploring these opportunities further in the next fortnight and giving you updates on how to maximise the funding available to recruit, retain and retrain your workforce in a creative and a cost-effective manner.
If you would like to discuss any of these strategies in detail, please contact us and we will work with you on building the best approach for your business.
