Trainees and apprentices: beat the skills shortage

While lacking experience, apprentices and trainees can bring practical and financial benefits to a business. Diving into this recruitment pool might quench your skills drought.

The skills shortage is crimping business throughout Australia, but apprentices and trainees can fill the void. Inexperience is not necessarily a negative. Filling these blank slates with industry-specific knowledge can mean you get the kind of employee you need, while contributing to creating a skilled labour force.

“From a small to medium-sized business point of view, there are a lot of advantages in taking on apprentices and trainees,” says Jim Barron, CEO of Group Training Australia (GTA). “They help to build and solidify the foundations of a business, particularly for SMEs. They’re really investments.” Barron believes investing in an apprentice or trainee can equal securing the future of a business. By acquiring new skills, new talents, upgraded skills and knowledge, from people who are just coming out of the school system, businesses become prepared to take on the competition. “Look beyond your own backyard. It’s a competitive environment, you’ve got to take on and continue upgrading the skills of your existing workforce.”

Apprentices and trainees can also offer their own skills to a business, Barron adds. “A lot of trainees and apprentices matriculate from university back into an apprenticeship, so they bring additional skills and knowledge to businesses.”

Reaping some of these benefits is Russell Mills, managing director of Burdens Plumbing Supplies. Burdens has hosted 15 retail and administration trainees in the last five years, and during this time the business spread across eight locations. “We wouldn’t have been able to grow the business without having those people there,” says Mills. “Good people are what your business is built on.”

While originally taking on trainees because he was unable to find trained employees, Mills now also appreciates the energy trainees bring into the workplace. “It’s good to have young people around the organisation.”

Despite the costs incurred in taking on trainees, Mills finds they are easily covered by government subsidies, and at times he even finishes with a marginal financial advantage.

Governmental financial incentives total about $4,000 over the course of an apprenticeship or traineeship. This includes an upfront payment on commencement. And under another government initiative, the apprentice or trainee is also eligible to receive a completion payment. Furthermore, on the Australian apprentices or trainees websites, employees can access a wider range of financial incentives, from toolkits to financial completion payments. To find out about more financial incentives, and how you can benefit, look at our list of helpful websites below.

It’s also likely that more new initiatives will soon be offered. “Both sides of politics have discovered the gravity of the skills shortage and have really put a lot of time, effort and resources into working out what they think are the best policies,” says Barron, who is optimistic about what the Rudd Government’s education revolution will do for training. “Within that revolution of education there is also need for a training revolution, and they have promised they will be putting a large policy emphasis on reinvigorating the training and vocation education sector,” he says. “We welcome that, but clearly it’s still early days.”