How Conveya improves programmes and helps businesses save time, money & resources

As an employer it has become increasingly more difficult to recruit colleagues with the right skills, retain them and be able to plan for the future skills needs of the business.  All of this coupled with economic dynamics, possible government change and increasing tension and barriers within international commerce means that an organisation has to think differently about its people.

The current apprenticeship landscape

We are lucky in the UK (and for the purposes of this article England) to have a very strong and highly effective apprenticeship programme that provides employers with not just training for staff development but also acts as a micro-system of organisations that specialise in recruitment, health and well-being, employee engagement as well as celebration and success. Underpinning this are the Government structures and policies which provide a raft of pipelines of candidates that have had recent employability and in some cases high levels of digital and technology training.

However, for an employer this is a very complex and confusing landscape and many of the things that a business would like to know about its people when they are undertaking training and development is not easily found and in many cases the employer does not know what can be measured, why this is beneficial, and how they can use it to measure the performance of their workforce.

Apprenticeships are a positive force for businesses and the economy, but there are still issues

According to the Chartered Institute of Continuous Professional Development (CIPD) ‘While training, apprentices are estimated to have contributed to a positive net gain of on average £1,670 per apprentice in England in 2013/14. That amounts to a total annual benefit of £1.4bn across the estimated number of apprentices. In the longer term, it’s estimated that each apprenticeship created is worth an estimated £38,000 to the economy.’

We know in that the current retention rates on apprenticeships is around 55% which is improving but only 54% successfully achieve their apprenticeship. (GOV.UK: education-statistics.service.gov.uk  2023-2024 national government data).  (The Government has set a national target achievement rate of 67% for 2025).

For an employer this means that nearly half of their staff are leaving the apprenticeship and not gaining the skills and knowledge they expected and needed them to, hopefully in 2025 it will be much improved.  However, hopefully is not good enough! It also means that the time and effort they put into recruiting someone, supporting a colleague with their learning, and time given to off the job training is wasted in many cases.

Data can be key to improvements

To have data as an employer opens up a window into how apprentices and line managers are engaging with their learning and applying it to their workplace.  Conveya makes it easy to pull data together form several training providers into one coherent place with a standard look that meets the needs of employers not funding bodies.

Conveya not only tracks learners once on programme against some fundamental indicators such as start and end date, completion and retention but also qualitative indicators such as engagement, speed of progress, quality of work.

Be able to tell how your changes are affecting your programmes

To be able to gauge how well different members of staff like their learning and bring new learning into the workplace to effect improvement and change is without doubt an amazing way to demonstrate Return on Investment.  Conveya enables an employer to report on the quality of the learner’s work on the apprenticeship aligned to workplace improvement, so a direct correlation between learning and business impact.

This manifests itself well in the many end point assessment reports that apprentices produce which are on real work-based projects and problems.

Recognise if your investments are working

There is one thing to capture progress and success but another to ensure that a learner is engaging with the learning, doing well, putting their learning into practice and on track to achieve against the anticipated completion date.  Conveya shows at a glance the speed of progress of an apprentice against where they are expected to be, whether on track or falling behind.  

This is important as the employer is investing in the apprentice and any further time spent on the apprenticeship over and beyond what was planned is further time and money the employer has to find and particularly difficult for smaller businesses. It means that both the employer and provider can target support and not waste time and resources where it is not needed, or tackle a problem when it is too late for the learner.

Regular check-ins allow you to grasp the employee experience

Conveya also has the facility for employers to ask questions in surveys at set points throughout the year and produce summary results for employers to use.  The results of these linked to the base data in the system provides employers with the ability to demonstrate impact and where there are areas to improve with regard to their own business.  

They could perhaps see in the survey results that one part of the business are not supporting apprentices, enabling the employer to drill down into why and put strategies in place to address.

Facilitates the recognition that brings retention

Having high level data and detailed information on each apprentice is incredibly beneficial when putting apprentices forward for internal and external awards.  The information is in the system and when extracted adds to the richness of evidence to support the submission.  

Apprentices can be recognised for their high performance on the apprenticeship and in their job because the system has flagged it for the employer. An additional benefit is that it highlights the line managers that are proactively and effectively supporting their team member with their development.

Pinpoint areas for improvement to spend levy and resources wisely

Conveya is very good at producing high level management reports in a dashboard style against some key indicators such as equality and diversity, age ranges, sectors, levels, recruited apprentices and those that are developing their skills.  

It provides senior leaders with clear trends data that demonstrates good use of the Levy to benefit the business and how that is being evidenced with further qualitative examples captured in the system to support the analysis.

It is relatively early days for employers using Conveya and in understanding the extent to what they can measure through it, but it is exciting to think that this is the first time that employers have had visibility to this extent for their apprentices across the range of providers they work with.  

The system will also report year on year trends so that an employer can see their own retention rates, achievements, progressions from one apprenticeship to another, ED&I data over time which helps with workforce planning, recruitment of talent, targeting of early careers activities and many more L&D strategies. A game changer for employers!

About Anne

Anne has over 30 years in the FE/HE and Skills Sectors, with 20 of them specialising in large employers and their successful implementation of government-funded learning particularly apprenticeships. She believes in creating successful partnerships that engage and empower learners to achieve. She understands how businesses can attract and retain talent. Anne is outcome focused with quality at the core of everything she does. She is a respected advocate for work-related learning across FE and HE. You'll find Anne on LinkedIn here.

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