1. Understanding employer engagement with apprenticeships in the UK
Professor Melanie Simms University of Glasgow

2. Background to the research
Young people’s transitions to work are becoming harder, longer and more insecure (Bradley and Devadason 2008)
Few systems of job matching in UK labour market (Simms 2013)
Problematic development of vocational training system (Keep 2015)
Employer engagement with labour market initiatives to promote youth employment is patchy at best (UKCES 2011)

3. Existing research Skills agenda (Furlong and Cartmel 2006, UKCES 2015)
Emphasis on young people being ‘work ready’ and ‘employable’ (McQuaid and Lindsay 2005)
Organisation studies/HRM literature
How policy and institutional contexts shape HR decisions (van Gestel and Nyberg 2009, Boon et al 2009)
Little is known about the levers within the firm to engage employers
Existing research

4. Research framework
Van Gestel and Nyberg (2015) look at Dutch employers and their engagement with various labour market policies
Netherlands is a very different context:
Different incentives and disincentives, different public expectations, strong systems of bipartite (unions and employers) negotiation of labour market policies
But their work is still helpful. They identify 3 main dimensions in the process of translating national policies to organisational practices:
Individual preferences
Strategic reframing
Local grounding

5. The research Stage One (2013): contact highly engaged employers
Identified through engagement with a particularly innovative youth employment programme run nationally by a large, specialist NGO
Hospitality x3, retail x2, professions x2, public sector x1, construction x1, engineering x2
33 interviews with senior managers (HR, operations, L&D, unit managers)
7 specialists e.g. within the NGO
Stage Two (2015): matched with similar employers that are less directly involved + 3 SMEs
Hospitality x2, retail x2, professions x2, public sector x1, construction x1, B2B services x1
57 further interviews with senior managers
The research

6. Individual preferences
Stories of personal agency central to the narrative of engagement
A champion within the organisation
Particularly important in engaged employers
HR logic: succession planning, need to develop training programmes, cost of L&D activities, HR strategy
CSR logic: “it’s the right thing to do”, “it’s about giving back”, “we’re doing our bit”
Engaged employers almost always have both
Disengaged employers have one but not the other, or neither
Evidence of two different logics emerges:
Individual preferences

7. Strategic reframing – business models
“We’ve got to do this [training and recruitment] no matter what…the funding is helpful but it wouldn’t change the basics of what we do.” (HR Director, EngineeringCo2).
“The problem we have is that they [young employees and recruits] don’t see it as a career. They have their first job in a pub, but they don’t think that they could be earning 50 grand [£50,000] in a few years’ time. And nor do their parents.” (Operations Director, HospitalityCo1).
Strategic reframing – business models

8. Both HR and CSR logics are evident in both engaged and disengaged employers HR: talent pipeline, how training has historically been organised, making it easier for trained staff to be poached? CSR: seen to be doing your bit vs. reputational risk
Levers: HR and CSR

9. “In Austria, our concern was that if we didn’t take on our fair share of apprentices, it would be bad for business. We would have been known. And named and shamed. In the UK, it’s the opposite. If we take people on, we risk getting labelled a bad employer…There’s a lot of concern about apprenticeship rates [of pay]. I think it’s only a matter of time before unions or campaigns target that. Quality. Completion rates. People are worried about all those things.” (Senior HR manager, ServicesCo1)
“We’ve just had to get more professional at developing them… We have to keep far more records so we can show what they’ve been doing. It’s good. It’s forced office managers to think harder about how they deal with other staff too.” (HR manager, ProfessionalCo2).
Local grounding

10. Some lessons
Van Gestel and Nyberg’s framework is definitely helpful in understanding how and why employers engage or not
It helps highlight two related, but different, logics for engagement:
HR logics
CSR logics
This helps us know more about what levers there are to change employer behaviour – policies must appeal to both logics!
More work to be done to understand these dynamics
ESRC-SDS funded research studentship starting in October to explore the effects of the Levy in the Scottish context

11. Full paper
Simms, M (2017) Understanding employer engagement in youth labour market policy in the UK. Human Resource Management Journal.