Utility apprentices moved to frontline roles

Utility companies are placing apprentices on operational duties earlier than planned while their training has been paused due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Nick Ellins, chief executive of the Energy & Utilities Skills Group, said the virus had caused recruitment to collapse and that social distancing measures have meant training centres have closed their doors to apprentices.

Speaking to Utility Week, Ellins said he had spoken to six companies so far which had confirmed they were placing apprentices close to completing their course to frontline duties where safe to do so.

He said: “For some of the apprentices their apprenticeship has actually been paused. But the person has been transferred to operational duties in line with their experience with all the checks and balances and safety you’d expect.

“They came to the pragmatic conclusion that if you take a site-based person with all the operational abilities they have, and you try and make them a home worker, the sheer self-isolation of the person in that role alone is not the right way to drive their career. So they’re typically moving them into frontline operation roles with all the checks and balances so they can carry on learning, ready for when the apprenticeships restart, come off pause, they can pop them back in, get them graduated officially and keep going. But in the meantime, they’ve been doing completely relevant work.

“That’s not a luxury of the utility sector, but it’s certainly one of the benefits we’re experiencing. There’s quite a bit of upside to this, despite all the dramas as long as everybody plans and intends to keep the utility sector on mass at the best possible state of readiness ready to compete when it comes back out the other end.”

UK Power Networks currently has 35 final year apprentices who were due to finish their training in the summer. By rescheduling their remaining training, the apprentices have achieved their full course earlier than planned and have been released to help the business.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Severn Trent said apprenticeships were going on as normal but that teaching has shifted to remote learning.

They added that the company is looking at each frontline apprentice due to finish their course in summer individually and that where safe to do so, they will complete it as usual.

Electricity North West said it will not fast-track its apprentices as there are enough operational field staff to cope with work demands.

Ellins added that EU Skills believes the utilities sector should join the Construction Industry Training Board in suspending its statutory levy.

He said: “We understand the difficulties of pausing cash-in right now, but it does seem a bit odd to give businesses support mechanisms, mechanisms from central government, only to get central government to take it out the other end from a levy they can’t use.

“So the preferred option was don’t take the money in the first place. But if it’s absolutely impossible, then the answer would be to do something pragmatic and not disadvantage the employers by saying to them, if the pandemic last seven months, by the time you come out, you’ve only got 12 or 13 or 14 months to spend it, that’s just unfair.

“So the ideal is don’t take it in the first place, the backup would be if you’re going to do that do the pragmatic thing as we’re seeing everywhere else in the economy. But if they didn’t take the money, that is an exact replica of what’s happening now in the construction industry where their statutory levy has been paused.”

Earlier this week EU Skills Group published its annual sector review, Collaboration in Action, which celebrates the work of its members and the sector-wide collaboration seen on workforce resilience and skills solutions in 2019/20.

Highlights of the report include:

• Securing the 1500th engineering-based apprentice to graduate through the sector’s end-point assessment organisation, the Energy & Utilities Independent Assessment Service.
• Creating and embedding an audited inclusion commitment that is changing how utility-based businesses operate and recruit to build diversity in the workforce. 42 organisations became signatories in its first year.
• Changing procurement culture as part of building a sustainable supply chain workforce. Around 80 asset owners and supply chain partners worked in collaboration, seeking to deliver the procurement skills accord –  requiring companies to ensure that responsible procurement practices are used to drive investment in skills through the delivery of contracts.