How Can You Use the Growth & Skills Levy Properly?

£3.3 billion worth of funding was handed back to the government in the last three years. That is, if you stop to think about it for A second, that's 1 billion a year. And then broken down, that's 90 million a month.

Statistically, 43% of people in hospitality don't stay after their first three months. So we lose them. We are not representing that hotel, that restaurant that we're working for. We are representing our industry.

We can train the skills. It's the behaviors that we need. I want my team to stay. I can't compete with the salaries, but what I can do is invest in my people and grow them.

Apprentices funding. How does it all work? It can feel like a minefield. That is why we have expert Vicki Glover coming on today who will tell you how it all puts together.

She is joined by myself, Timothy Rx Andrews and the other hosts, Tracer Rashid and Joe McDonald for episode 67 676-767-6767. The voices, you know, Timothy, Tracy and Joe on the show, from front of house to chefs on the line, every voice can shape the future each time. Welcome to the show. Vicki Glover.

Finally you are here. I am so pleased to have you on. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am delighted to be able to talk about my favorite subject.

What is your favorite subject? Apprenticeships. Ooh, we like apprenticeships, don't we, Trace? So tell me, because you work for Appetite for Apprenticeships, but also you're an ambassador for a number of organizations and they're all really kind of related around the same theme.

Yeah. So would you like to tell us what it is you do around apprenticeships specifically? Okay, absolutely. So what we do as a company is we go into organizations and we assist them with how to capitalize best capitalise on their apprenticeship levy because they have huge unspent levies or they don't have any levy at all.

So we can either seek levy for them or we can assist them with spending their levy and how best to within that within their organizations. So we will place programs and strategies in place for them. Great. We've had apprenticeship providers on the show already and they obviously they talk about the benefits of apprenticeships, but maybe in a sort of nutshell you can explain why it's important to you that you're pursuing the apprenticeship side and why you're trying to give access to so many people.

Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the apprenticeship levy, it sits there. So if you are an employer and you have a pay bill of more than 3 million, then you automatically pay into the levy. You pay 0.

5%. So it sits there and it crews and it accrues on a monthly basis and then it depletes on a monthly basis. And what we're trying to do is stop that expiring of those excess funds because the very large companies will have far more than they can ever spend. So what they can do and what we're advocating and we're on a real mission is to actually acquire that money from the big boys, the big guys in the industry, and gift it across to the SMEs, the small and medium enterprises, which is possible.

And it's, they can now offer, they used to only be able to offer 25% now, which is beautiful. They've. They can offer the 50%. So now they can really assist and help.

And that's what's supposed to happen because SMEs, small SMEs don't have the budget, they don't have the people team, they don't have the structure in their business to offer training, but they really want to and they want to acquire apprenticeship. So if they don't have any levy, then we can seek gifting for them from the other companies and we can put cost effective training programs in place for them. And all of the levy pays for the training. So 100% of that training by all of the training providers, like the hits, the lifetimes, the umbrellas, all of the little bespoke ones, like straight A.

And also you have some fabulous little straight kind of little independent ones that specifically look at different apprenticeships because not all one size fits all, unfortunately. So it's very, very important to choose the right training provider and we can guide them through that and which programs, because you've got 600 different standards of apprenticeships that you can choose and you can go through. I mean, it's a minefield. Like if you're looking at apprenticeships, when we've been looking at apprenticeships for various businesses that I've worked for, it's always you looking and going like, start, okay, well that sounds good.

We'll have a hospitality and catering level too. Yeah. And then you go through and it doesn't quite fit, depending on the provider. Because even it's not even the apprenticeships, it's not even the apprenticeships that are different.

It's actually providers are really hugely different. So you can go from one that's a sort of conglomerate that goes in and it's just like, right, we've got all these packages, but none of them misspoke nope, they're all off the shelf because they're so big. Right. So of course they do this offering, but particularly in hospitality, so many businesses are unique, like whether it's a corporate hotel or whether it's a small cafe or whatever, or bakery for example, you're all going to have a different requirement.

Yep, different. Completely different. So hospitality and catering level 2 for let's say Marriott hotels is just not going to fit for Trace has got a bakery. Yeah.

It's just not, it's just not going to work and you have to find providers to do that. But then how do you find it? This is one of the things is there's so many. There are hundreds of training providers in all different sectors, in all different industries and you have to drill down and really understand their offering.

Are they a closed or open cohort? Is it an online or is it face to face training they provide? They all have to follow a certain standard, government standard, but what they can do is they can bespoke it to your needs if they are in particular providers that will be able to do that for you. So it looks like your own in house training program, they'll brand it for you and everything.

So it really is. You have to consider an apprenticeship as like, like a bolt on to your existing training programs. You're not going to ever abolish the existing ones you've got if you've already a big company that have them in place. But if you have sitting there, if companies, when they say to me, we don't have any training budget, we don't have any training budget, don't even look to us at the moment because with all the pinches that we've had at the moment within our industry and the challenges that we've got, especially with April now hitting us with the increase in national minimum wage and also the NI increase, it's huge and companies are pulling in their belts and they're having to either put up their prices to accommodate or we will find that they will reduce their staffing levels to accommodate as well because there's a massive pay bill that they're going to have to acquire now.

There are little tweaks that you can do. There are benefits to apprenticeships that have just come in or that those are available that people aren't all altogether aware of. So for example, anybody under the age of 25, be that a new, new employee that you bring into the next generation, which the government are really encouraging at the moment, or if you have existing staff members and you want to upskill or reskill them then, and they're under the age of 25, then you will not pay National Insurance as an employee.

As an employee, you do. As employer, you don't. So that's a massive cost saving already. If you're starting to think, right, where can we make those cost savings?

Where can we really benefit our business economically? Then you can, you can start putting in. But also at the same time, you are bringing your next generation in into the industry. Yeah.

So it's fabulous. I like that you said about the next generation. It's definitely about that and kind of just going backwards a bit. In regards to apprentices, I've always been an advocate.

I think the kind of earn and learn is a great concept and I've actually introduced it into a company that I've worked for before. I always found one of the hardest things is the stigma that an apprenticeship is for that dropout, someone who's got, you know, no kind of focus or doesn't know what they want to do. How. Have you seen that attitude?

Or have you seen the attitude change? And how are employers kind of like thinking, yes, this is for me. Yeah, I think. Great question, because in terms of bringing the next generation in and having that enthusiasm, I think when the youth culture, they are excited about having their first job, they are excited about having an apprenticeship and being in that.

In that working environment and getting some money and learning at the same time. However, what happens is they get demotivated when they move into the workplace if it isn't the right training provider or the right course for them. So I think the really important thing is to. Is at recruitment stage to make sure that you have.

Because we can, we can train the skills, it's the behaviors that we need to have. So if they have the right attitude and the right will to learn, then absolutely. If they're just being pushed into it or they're being. Or they're being used as an extra pair of hands and they don't feel valued, then they won't stay and they won't be encouraged.

But if you have somebody that you motivate them and you invest in their future and you tell them how they're going to progress and what the future looks like for them and how they can elevate themselves to that next progressional role, then I think you've caught. You've caught them, you've got them. Because I've worked with some absolutely incredible. And it doesn't matter about the age.

It, you know, kind of. I've had fabulous 16 year olds that I've put in the kitchen and people have been like, I can't believe you put them into a working kitchen at 16. But I knew that that kitchen could sustain it. And also it's all about the learning mentors they have.

So it's their line managers who have to be invested because it's all well and good to have these fabulous ideas in the head office and think, great, we'll put apprenticeship programs in place and we're going to, we're going to make this happen. But what you have to do is you have to have the buy in from the team, you have to have the acknowledgement and the embedding from the team and the line manager especially, who's really going to encourage and motivate that new learner because they're on a new journey and they, and they want to be there and they want to progress.

I guess that's the key point, isn't it? You don't want to, you know, it's already hard to get people into hospitality, so ruining their first experience is detrimental. Well, I mean, don't do it, don't do it. Yeah.

Statistically, 43% of people in hospitality don't stay after their first three months. So we lose them. So we lose almost half, which is shocking. And that's double the national average of other industries.

See, that figure gets me so mad. And what I mean by that is I still don't think there are employers out there that understand that when that person comes through the door for the first time, we are not representing that hotel, that restaurant that we're working for. We're doing more than that. We are representing our industry right now.

We're so competitive. We've got a bad reputation, wrongly in some areas, rightly in others. Right. And we have to work on improving that.

So if we don't deliver on our promise. We have, if we promise something, we have to deliver on it because we have one shot at it. You do. One shot.

Those 43% of people, it's very unlikely they will ever come back to hospitality in any shape or form. And then we sit there and we go, why can't we get the numbers in? Yeah. Onboarding is crucial.

Yeah. 43% dropout after three months. That's like my dating record. That's not 43 months.

Three days. Now you seem to have about you. I was going to say it's two months longer. Yeah, I was going to say it's not like it is your data making.

I mean, seriously, that is traumatizing as it is. We talked about, like, AI stuff coming through as well yesterday. And it's like, yeah, you got to innovate and you got to push forward, but actually, like, come on, like, if we're not working hard to keep people who are coming in, it's first impression, you know, we do the same thing for guests, right? Like, why are we so good at making such a good first impression?

We know how to do this. This is our industry. We look after people and we're so, so good at looking after guests when they first come through the door. It's like, first five seconds, have you made eye contact, have you acknowledged them?

And then we've got steps that we follow. Why are we so terrible at inducting people into. There should be steps of service for steps of onboarding. You know, kind of.

There are, but are they followed? Are they followed? You know, too? And also it's the.

We are shocking. And this is where the kind of the birth of appetite for apprenticeship came from. We're shopping shocking at retaining our staff, but also at training them adequately. Because usually as a manager, you step into.

You've. You've been fabulous on the floor, you're brilliant, you're. You're absolutely amazing operationally. And so you.

We, we say, this is amazing. We'd love you to be a team leader, let's elevate you to a supervisor level. And then we tap them on the shoulder and we give them one day training and, and kind of say, right, go for it. You're away and you have to kind of learn and fumble your way through.

This isn't good enough. We're setting them up to fail. So this is where apprenticeships are incredible because the funding is there. So we know.

And in fact, this is another shocking fact that you're gonna. That you're gonna love or hate with hate is that £3.3 billion worth of funding was handed back to the government in the last three years. That is, if you stop to think about it for A second, that's 1 billion a year.

And then broken down, that's 6. That's 90. Yeah, maths. That's 90 million a month that we are just handing back to the government.

That is meant to be training budget within our team to retain and upskill our staff. Let's do some more quick maths. How many employees, how many people are employed by hospitality? Oh, it's changed.

So we are the third. No, we're the third largest employer and we employ 3.5 million a year and we contribute 93 billion to the economy in the last three. Sorry, six years.

So why are we not an employer of choice? Why are we not in industry of choice? It's perception and we have to pass that parent test. We have to promote it in schools and colleges.

We have to be more active in actually saying, this is an incredible industry. You can progress. By the age of your mid-20s, you can be running a million pound pub in, you know, kind of looking after. You can be your own entrepreneur.

And so why are we not elevating that? So let's pull that back a little bit because there is a point where, yes, it's all very well us saying, well, why aren't we? Why aren't we? If you're working for a larger organization.

Yep. We have access quite easily to a lot of tools. We can do various things. If you're running your own business or small, you're quite, it can be quite stressful.

You're doing all the hours. It's quite lonely as well. At the top. It is how there are people that you don't know about this thing.

Yeah. Right. I'm pretty savvy, but I had to sit down with you and go, well, how do I get my money out of this pot? This rate that we're paying into this pot, but how do we get a hold of it?

So I think this is a, this is a crucial element and I think this is why we, we do this podcast, is to say, well, here is how you can do it. Yeah. Okay. So if you're listening, let's say I, maybe I'm working for a hotel.

Yep. Maybe I'm, for instance, maybe I'm working. For you a minute to figure that out. Maybe I'm working for myself and I've got, it's a, it's a small business.

Haven't got a bloody clue. Yep. But I want my team to stay. I can't compete with the salaries, but what I can do is invest in my people and grow them.

Where can we find it? How do we get that information? Yeah. So most people aren't aware, you're absolutely right.

Of the benefits of apprenticeships and also the cost savings that they can have within that, within that structure. So one, you can go to the government website, hmrc. It's very convoluted. Strange that.

Because if we don't use it, that goes back into the treasury. So, yeah, kind of it's. We are here as appetite for apprenticeships. Yes.

Odds that to demystify, unpick and simplify the whole process for you so. Because that was the frustration, the fact that you have it there but you don't know how to access it. So we will work out for you how to access it, how to get these funds and also how to use them as well. Best use them.

So in terms of the benefits of apprenticeships, if you're looking at really drilling down to the benefits, so one, you have the ability to upskill and reskill, importantly your, your, your new staff, your kind of existing staff members. So that is vitally filling in those skill gaps that you have within your business. Two, you can have the ability to motivate and retain your staff because every apprenticeship is at least a year and the management courses are 18 to 24 months. So you already have.

And especially back of house and chefing, then you have, you've got, you've got your chefs with kind of up to two years and, and the statistics are 73% of apprenticeships stay within their business up to two years after they finish their apprenticeship, which is incredible. So we know that if you're investing in them, they're staying with you because they feel valued and important within your business. Then you've got. So you've got your retention piece covered.

You've also got your social mobility piece, which is where my heart comes in, because this is where we have the ability to offer the opportunity to people of different diverse groups within to. We are brilliant at hospitality, at doing that. We're very diverse and inclusive and I think we have the ability to bring people from disadvantaged backgrounds and give them that elevated position. They can't afford to go to university, they can't afford to.

So we are giving that social mobility to them. We, the companies that are doing this, the groups that are charities that are doing this really well, which I am championing. Ria Ferdinand foundation, who have groups all across the UK and also into Ireland and Scotland and they have little cells within those groups who will, will teach and train and give the opportunity, but they'd also show them what's available and what's out there because they don't know what you know at 16 to 18, you don't know what, what's going to be available to you.

So to give them that voice is amazing. And we've also worked. I'm also a champion of Only Pavement Away, which is a brilliant group who bring people from the streets, homeless people and also ex service and veterans and they give them the ability to be within and they work very heavily with crisis to make sure that they are within that, within that organization. So they're brilliant, brilliant causes.

One of the things that Timothy just mentioned was, well, the examples he was giving for people that want an apprentice or seek an apprentice is, you know, a big Hotel or, or SMEs with employees. So I'm a sole trader. Yep. For myself and I've been approached before about having an apprentice and in my mind it's like, yes, I support it, but do I have time to like be with someone and sit with someone, you know, out of my daily, what I need to do in my daily role?

So what would you say to someone who is a sole trader as to the benefit of having an apprentice? You're absolutely right. You have to. I think if the will is there, I think that's the most important thing because if you're bringing a new person into your business anyway, you're going to train them, right.

You're going to sit with them, you're going to give them information, you're not going to say I'm sorry, I haven't got time to answer that question. You're going to be with them anyway on a day to day basis and you're going to be doing that. It's exactly the same, it's no different. What we have to do, you have to DO is incorporate 20% of that working time as in what they classify as off the job hours.

So in other words, within your work time. And it's over the lifetime of the program as well. So you don't have to consider that you have to do six hours per week, has to be dedicated to the friendship you'll be giving them projects they'll be working on anyway. If they're learning something new, a new skill, if they're shadowing you, if they're learning from you, it can all be accounted to that learning.

So that it's very learner led. Actually the guidance from the line manager or the employer is actually has reduced greatly because now it's just almost coming in and just being there as a support, nurturing them, but also just signing them off. Every couple of, you know, six to eight weeks the, the, the training provider will come in and go, how are they doing? How are they going?

And so actually it's kind of, it's, it's more support for you with a new learner on board because they're giving you the guidance and they're giving you the framework that you maybe wouldn't have had or would have had to sit down and work out. So actually I think it's, it's much better for A small SME or a sole trainer, because they've got a framework that already you are leaving the training to the professionals. It's like, right, they are ready made, they have these standards they've got to adhere to.

You can tweak them as an employer if you, you can sit down and put a structure in with these brilliant training providers who'll do that for you. But it's really important that you're invested. So I think the most important thing is you want it, you want to do it and you want to progress somebody within your business and you want to give them the time and the energy to flourish and to have a fabulous career and to be a mini you. Mini me.

You sold me on that bit. Vicki, this has been really fascinating in terms of hearing the statistics and actually how much help is actually is. And actually how much help is really there. So thank you very much, but we've said the help is there.

But how do they find you? Have they found me? So you just go to Appetite. Well, one, just pick up the phone, call me, pick up the phone and call me.

Our numbers on the website. It's Appetite for Apprenticeships. We also have a sister company which is Appetite for Recruitment. And then we have an alternative sister company as well, which is Appetite, which is Hospitality Jobs uk, which help people into jobs.

And also the fabulous, I mean, I found the fabulous Nick Clover, who has, who has built these programs. But we've also worked with wonderful Dawn Lawrence, who actually puts in works with universities. She's created a whole new bracket which is called hu, a whole new company which is. Now, let me get this right.

Hospitality Universities United and they will actually work with it because it's not just for entry level. It's what I really need to stress. It's not just for entry level, it's for graduates as well, who finish. And we lose lots of our graduates because they just think they can go into hotels, they just think they have to be in hotels.

Not knocking hotels, Tim. However, there are such. It's such a huge sector that we have, we have events, we have late night, we have pubs, we have branded restaurants, we have qsr, we have such an. I mean, if you want to work in hospitality and you love it as much as we do, you find your people, you find your tribe, you find your space.

It's inclusive, it's exciting, it's fun. One of the biggest insights, Cam Media has just launched their salary survey and they said the top reason for people working in hospitality is because they work with great people. I think that encompasses us as an industry and then that's above salary and above career progression, which are in the top three as well. So top three or four.

So it's, it's an amazing industry to get into. Hot apprenticeships are there for the taking so we have all of that ability, especially for SMEs. So SMEs get in touch for sure. So we have recently, I won't mention the brand but we have recently acquired 70,000 pound funding for them to be able to place into their.

And they've only five sites so they're only very small. So they had no levy at all. And we have, we partnered with a very large company and they donated. I will mention that company because I'd like to give them a shout out.

Marsden's thank you Paul Fellows. He was absolutely fantastic about being very generous and saying yes, I'd love to be able to support our SMEs. I'd love to be able to support our industry and to be able to train and retain and attract more people. And this is through our apprenticeships.

So we were able to gift that across and then be able to enable them to put an apprenticeship program in place that suited them. They wanted to upskill their existing staff members within their head office but also their elevate which is not exclusive to them but to their supervisor level staff members who just didn't have that additional training that they needed. And that's a whole, that's an 18 month program which teaches them everything from soft skills, which I hate the expression because they're not, they're essential skills but it gives them those leadership management skills that they just didn't have the ability, the theories, the practical and also gives them an accreditation at the end of it.

So why wouldn't you want to do that? Absolutely. So if you're looking to get hold of Vicky, you can go to our guest page, talkinghospitality.com and just look up Vicki Glover and also we will have a link to the survey, the largest hospitality survey under the episode.

So do check it out. Vicky, thank you very much. Been a great audience. You've been a great audience, you've been.

Thanks for listening to us, Vicky. Yeah, thanks, thanks. About apprenticeships and then my very last word is use it. If you don't use your levy, you will lose it.

So use your levy and if not gift it to companies that will put it to fabulous use. Talking hospitality, the voices, you know.