Don’t miss out on Graduate Apprenticeship benefits, says Perth and Kinross Council

Perth & Kinross Council, which is benefitting from Graduate Apprenticeships, is encouraging other Perthshire organisations not to miss the July 31 deadline to apply for their own.

Developed by Skills Development Scotland, with support from the European Social Fund, Graduate Apprenticeships (GAs) are a new type of degree combining work-based learning and high-quality education. Businesses can hire a new member of staff as a GA or sponsor an existing employee.

Current staff can be anyone as relevant work experience and desire to learn outweighs formal education, so non-technical employees can move into a new area of work such as management or IT. It’s also an opportunity to bring new knowledge and skills into your business and attract new talent as an alternative to traditional graduate schemes.

Graduate Apprenticeships benefit employers in many ways – staff put their learning into action on work-based projects and the training improves their ability, engagement and productivity. GAs also help companies future-proof their technical talent pipelines - IT and engineering professionals are in high demand and apprentices become loyal, long term employees fulfilling the needs of your recruitment and staff development strategy.

Upskilling existing employees not only improves their personal development but the firm benefits from their higher productivity and expertise and improves its retention of talent. Senior staff also get to develop their CPD in mentoring skills.

Graduate Apprenticeships are fully-funded – the only cost to companies is the employee’s salary – and the employee is only at the university one day a week. The GA Programme has already established a 100% track record on student retention in its first year - with no dropouts and no failures.

Perth & Kinross Council is already enjoying the benefits of having a Graduate Apprentice studying at the University of Dundee. Professional Trainee Leyton Grant is studying Civil Engineering at The University of Dundee and has completed his first year.

His mentor, Senior Engineer Craig Daly, says: “The Graduate Apprenticeship has enabled us to recruit a member of staff who’s dedicated and committed to pursuing Civil Engineering as a career, which is a challenging sector to recruit for.

“From Leyton’s perspective, it’s given him the opportunity to get a mix of academic and practical learning which will be invaluable to him going forward in his career.

“We chose to do this through the University of Dundee as it has an excellent reputation for working with organisations to support their requirements.

“We hope to support more staff through GAs and would recommend them to other employers.”

The University of Dundee offers Graduate Apprenticeships in IT Management for Business, Software Development, Engineering Design and Manufacture, Civil Engineering and Business Management. The deadline to apply for them is July 31.

For more information about the Graduate Apprentices available at the University of Dundee and how to apply, go to https://www.dundee.ac.uk/industry/graduateapprenticeships/

Don’t miss out on Graduate Apprenticeship benefits, says Perth and Kinross Council

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