Hiring and retaining employees is one of the biggest challenges facing companies today. More than 19 million American workers have left their jobs this year, while hiring rates have accelerated to outpace the rate of quitting.  

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What can employers do, regardless of market conditions? Job seekers are actively looking for workplaces that offer them not just the salary they want, but flexibility, professional growth opportunities, and alignment with their values. In order to meet their prospective and current employees demands, companies must rethink their hiring strategies to stay relevant throughout the great resignation and beyond.   

Hiring as its traditionally practiced is broken

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Hiring is expensive, competitive, and frustrating and takes a long time. In addition, employee turnover is a huge drain on company productivity, morale, and success. 

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While companies can attempt to spend more money on job postings and marketing, hire specialized recruiters, and increase compensation and benefits, unless they take a holistic approach to hiring and retention, these surface measures will fail to deliver long term results. To survive and thrive during and after this current economic and cultural upheaval currently facing the American workplace, companies must:

• Take a more strategic, long term approach when it comes to recruiting, developing, and retaining talent.
• Invest in building a sustainable workplace culture that meets employees needs and supports their professional and personal growth.
• Resist relying on outdated quick fix strategies such as one-time bonuses that feel transactional or over investing in irrelevant “perks” employees don’t use.

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Apprenticeships are tailor made to address the challenges posed by any market condition. Custom designed for your company, they provide promising candidates and current employees who have the drive to take on new challenges with the skill set they need to not only be successful, but to grow with your company.  

How apprenticeships boost hiring and retention

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Employees will stay at a job if they feel valued, like they are doing meaningful work, and have a pathway towards professional growth. By contrast, a study by McKinsey found that these correspond to the top reasons why people leave jobs: They don’t feel valued by their company or managers and they don’t feel a sense of belonging or alignment of values. 

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Apprenticeships are a holistic solution to retain employees, attract and hire new talent, and meet your diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. They enable you to broaden the talent base you can hire from. Through mentorship, on-the-job, and in-classroom training they provide a path for “non-traditional” candidates and those who might be a great fit for your company but lack knowledge or experience in a particular area to develop the skills they need to be successful and contribute from day one. 

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For current entry- and mid-level employees, apprenticeships open up professional development opportunities within your company. They demonstrate a tangible commitment to employee growth and enable employees not just to upskill, but to give back to your company with those skills. In addition, because they help accelerate and broaden the hiring pipeline, apprenticeships help reduce employee burnout by filling vacant roles and enabling employees to engage in fulfilling, mission-aligned work. 

How apprenticeships support diversity, equity, and inclusion 

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Performative, surface-level diversity efforts are no longer enough. Prospective and current employees want companies that are accountable to their diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments and make lasting, impactful investments to support it. In a recent survey of tech and IT employees, 50% said they would leave a job because the culture was not committed to racial justice, ending economic inequality, and LGBTIA inclusion. In addition, 68% said they have felt uncomfortable in a role because of their identity or background. 

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Investing in an apprenticeship program demonstrates a true commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Apprenticeships make an impact because they: 

• Provide development and mentoring opportunities to diverse early talent and future leadership. 
• Give employers a chance to boost current employees’ careers and provide a meaningful pathway to employment and promotion to groups of people who are historically underrepresented in the tech industry. 
• Change lives: They often triple participants' prior salaries, ending cycles of poverty. 

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This is the kind of concrete, measurable action around DE&I that employees are looking for from their employers and the kind of meaningful work and workplace culture they want to contribute to. 

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Get in touch with us to find out more about how working with Onramp to design an apprenticeship program can activate your mission, accelerate your hiring, provide your employees with meaningful professional development opportunities, and help you weather the storm of any market condition. Contact us.

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