Organizations Can Overcome Labor Shortages By Expanding And De-Risking The Hiring Process.

Registered apprenticeships help businesses to diversify their talent pool while maintaining high recruiting requirements.

 

Apprenticeship is a tried-and-true technique for companies looking to hire and educate competent workers quickly. The conventional apprenticeship model, which is a form of employment-education hybrid, combines supervised on-the-job training with related technical instruction or other approved education.

An apprenticeship program’s goals are to provide a fair wage and widely applicable and nationally recognized certification to employees, as well as to provide career advancement opportunities and to cultivate an advanced skill set that meets an employer’s needs and yields overall positive returns on investment for employers. Because traditional requirements such as work experience are actively met on the job, registered apprenticeship, which is backed by the Department of Labor, allows firms to extend their talent sources without reducing their recruiting standards.

 

While apprenticeship programs have existed for decades in a variety of industries, rapid market growth and labor shortages in recent years have necessitated the need to upgrade the apprenticeship model in order to satisfy firms’ growing and dynamic labor market and employment needs. ClearForce, a risk management firm, has partnered with Safal Partners, a workforce solutions firm, to provide companies a high-quality, streamlined approach to recruiting, training, and upskilling people in vital digital occupations through a one-of-a-kind national registered apprenticeship program. Their innovative strategy involves cutting-edge behavioral monitoring of employees throughout the apprenticeship process to enhance trainee growth while also reducing the risk of hiring for businesses.

The apprenticeship model has been upgraded to include needed flexibility such as competency-based training, virtual or hybrid instruction delivery, and direct alignment with both industry credentials and academic credit toward college degrees. With equally considerable benefits, the model can be adapted and employed by practically any industry or corporation. Organizations can benefit from the productivity of a qualified employee, and workers can get the skills, qualifications, and certifications they need to advance their careers by embracing this low-risk form of hiring.

 

Technology is one of the fastest-growing fields for modern apprenticeship. Tech occupations are expected to increase faster than all other fields in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The workforce pipeline, on the other hand, is not keeping up. Roles are taking longer to fill, according to industry experts and hiring managers, and current educational courses are not adequately educating young professionals for the job. According to Cyberseek.org, there are approximately 600,000 available cybersecurity positions in the United States alone, with a supply/demand ratio of 68 percent – meaning there are only enough cybersecurity experts to satisfy 68 percent of the roles that firms require. According to Infosec’s 2020 IT and Security Talent Pipeline Study, 72% of hiring managers said there are “not enough competent individuals to fill unfilled cyber positions.”

Employers in the tech industry, as well as other critical sectors such as health care, transportation, hospitality, and utilities, as well as blue-collar industries such as construction and manufacturing, are faced with a number of options: endure long-term staffing shortages, seek capital-intensive opportunities to automate, lower or adjust hiring standards, or develop some type of in-house apprenticeship or expedited professional development.

 

Long-term workforce shortages, especially in important tech and cybersecurity areas, could be disastrous. With bad actors increasing their cyberattacks, short-staffed firms, both foreign and domestic, are exposed to data breaches and other attacks that could result in data loss or long-term financial and/or reputational damage.

Employers may be able to fill positions more quickly by lowering or changing hiring standards, but are the costs worth it? For example, just deleting or modifying academic qualifications, industrial experience, or criminal background restrictions will almost certainly expand an organization’s eligible applicant pool quickly. However, without a strategy for evaluating and developing personnel, companies are unlikely to achieve the high-quality, engaged staff they desire.

 

Organizations can tighten hiring standards, broaden talent sourcing, and build career pathways to enhance long-term worker loyalty by having a planned training and evaluation or certification plan in place for important jobs. The gold standard for workforce training is apprenticeship. Assessment or certification is crucial; registered apprenticeship programs ensure that apprentices demonstrate gained knowledge and proficiency to reach mastery of the occupation, which is measured by assessments throughout the program.

 

Apprenticeship prepares firms to hire for vital jobs based on skills and aptitudes. Employers can reduce hiring risk and expand their pool of competent candidates by employing industry-validated training frameworks that combine structured on-the-job duties with associated education. Companies can eliminate the default necessity for a college degree for all professional roles by focusing on the skills and competencies required for tech professions and providing a structured training plan for qualified applicants to achieve those skills. This is especially important in light of the fact that the U.S. According to Census data, more than half of the American workforce (58%) lacks a college diploma.

Even for jobs that require a college diploma, given how quickly technology evolves, the information a candidate learned in school may be outdated, especially if the job requires a bachelor’s degree plus several years of work experience. Apprenticeships allow recent graduates to get instantly applicable on-the-job training that they would not have gotten as part of their academic degree program.

Apprenticeship also allows firms to broaden their pool of qualified candidates by leveraging federal and state resources to encourage the hiring of non-traditional candidates with non-violent criminal histories. 66 percent of managers who followed fair chance hiring practices and hired someone with a criminal history rated that person’s work as comparable to employees without a criminal history, according to the Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM). Employers with registered apprenticeship programs may be eligible for federal tax incentives and access to the Federal Bonding Program, in addition to help and resources from local workforce development boards. Employers who hire people with criminal backgrounds can get Fidelity Bonds at no cost.

 

Combining behavioral risk management with an apprenticeship program can help trainees focus and, in some situations, accelerate the acquisition of important skill sets while simultaneously reducing the risk of hiring. Together, the approaches allow managers to continuously assess apprentice performance based on customizable risk assessment criteria (such as felony and violent criminal records, sex offender registries, and negative social media postings) to ensure the candidate does not pose a threat to the organization’s reputation or other employees. Throughout the apprenticeship, candidates can be monitored at all times. Potential causes for worry can also be alerted to employers promptly via push-based alerts. As a result, hiring and development criteria have improved without lowering hiring requirements.

 

Apprenticeship also provides an employer with a structured method for bringing talent that would not otherwise qualify for a position, starting the apprentice at a lower price point (typically 40 to 70% of the pay rate for a fully skilled employee), recognizing that they will be receiving highly valuable training, mentorship, and instruction, and providing the hiring manager with a way of evaluating an apprentice’s performance.

A modern apprenticeship program developed to match the changing labor market and employer needs of the twenty-first century can help a company stand out in the talent pool. If businesses do not take measures to broaden their hiring and development processes, critical positions will go vacant, and employees will be hired without the full capability to execute their tasks and meet employer expectations. Modern apprenticeship programs require innovative advances in risk assessment technologies and services. There would be no need to choose between lowering recruiting quality or hiring qualified candidates. Companies may now have both with confidence.

 

 

 

 

Source: https://www.benefitspro.com/2022/05/13/expanding-and-de-risking-the-hiring-process-can-help-organizations-address-labor-shortages/