We must turn this apprenticeship spiral around…

Ray Mostogl | KEEN Partners CEO | August 16, 2022

Picture this, you are a passionate tradie who has had a wonderful career that has funded a family and were then at the stage where you want to give something back by training an apprentice. Imagine how it would feel if the selected apprentice terminated their trade after only 12 months…

The latest data for apprentices (who started their apprenticeship in 2016), shows one in three trade apprentices will have left within the first twelve months. 1 in 3! The second year is not any kinder with forty-five percent of trade apprentices quitting in year 2!

Despite all the great publicity about trades as a career and healthy wages (92 percent of apprentices who complete their training land a job), apprentices are leaving in droves. Tasmania, with a 62.2 percent completion rate does fare better than the national completion rate of 55.7 percent.

But the trend of not completing is still growing each year.

Supporting both employers and employees in the formative years of an apprenticeship or teaching a trade, requires access to a “very big toolbox” of people skills. With people from many varied backgrounds finding their way into an apprenticeship, many don't yet have the complete life skills around being a productive member of the workforce. Often they require support in areas their trainer has never had to have knowledge of.

Fortunately, Group Training Organisations (GTO) of which KEEN Partners is one, has access to this “toolbox” of people skills and are using those skills daily across any of our apprentices.

Whether that is visiting apprentices at TasTAFE and speaking with the trade trainers, or speaking with parents, grandparents and guardians, these measures are just some of what keeps the apprentice engaged for long enough to form the employability skills which leads to resilience and persistence. GTO’s traditionally report 85 percent completion rates which can also be replicated in larger employers who have invested in the organisational capability to support apprentices. Not all employers have the time or resources to do this.

Employers who use GTO’s benefit from the partnership with the three parties (five if we include the Network provider and RTO) working together and can turn up the level of support to suit the individual circumstances.

With so many new projects identified for our state and country in the next 10-20 years, getting higher apprentice completion rates will be just as important as getting the investment dollars and the materials.