Jacqui Smith should use her bully pulpit to challenge employers

How do you get employers to make different decisions? Specifically, how to you get more employers to recruit more apprentices, and more apprentices at the start of their careers?

The King’s Speech was all about just one of the tools available to government: changing the law. The government needs primary legislation to create Skills England, for example – but there are lots of things it can do with existing powers.

Just like the flying ants I saw swarming yesterday, policy wonks across the sector are busy with their ideas for how our new government might put flesh on the pretty bare bones of its ‘Skills and Growth Levy’.

Some ideas cost more money (new money, which Rachel Reeves says is scarce). Others mean dropping less useful features of existing arrangements in order to re-allocate money saved to somewhere it would be of more use.

We’ll all argue over the details, but the apprenticeship programme is under-performing. So it’s important to listen to the policy wonks who know the details, and pull every lever to sort things out.

But let’s not forget the bully pulpit: “a conspicuous position that provides an opportunity to speak out and be listened to,” as Wikipedia defines it. I’d add: “ … with listeners changing their behaviour as a result”. Because changed behaviour is key.

Every few weeks Danny Finkelstein writes in The Times that most things that most government ministers, most of the time have absolutely no effect on what most of the rest of us do. Why do I think it might be different this time? Because we have a brief moment when a new government is catching people’s attention (“The NHS is broken,” says Wes Streeting) on a mission to ‘reset relationships’.

Let’s hear Jacqui Smith simply calling on employers to take on more apprentices

So let’s hear Jacqui Smith, the new minister responsible for apprenticeships (and a former home secretary brought back into government in one of the more eye-catching appointments) make her first big speech about apprenticeships, simply calling-on employers to take on more apprentices.

Much the easiest target is those employers who have already decided to recruit apprentices; the aim is to get them to do more. I can hear Jacqui Smith saying:

“I want to challenge every company that is planning to take on new apprentices this autumn. To the larger companies, my challenge is this: for every 10 you planned to recruit, can you take another two?. To the smaller companies, my challenge is: for every one you planned to recruit, can you take another?”

You’re sceptical! I understand, but I recall the response during the pandemic when we challenged employers across the maritime sector to sign up – publicly – to two pledges:

• We pledge to do everything we can to keep apprentices in their jobs
• We pledge to do everything we can to stick with the next phase of our apprenticeship programme

We had big names and small sign up, right across the sector (all still there on our website for everyone to see).

I can’t prove that our pledges made a difference, but no company is going to sign a public pledge like that without a serious discussion internally. And that’s the prize: getting businesses to ask themselves: “why have we agreed to X as our target? Could we do more?”

I also recall the story of Princess Yachts in Poole, builders of very smart yachts. A couple of years ago they aimed to recruit 35 apprentices in their annual round, but they were knocked out by the quality of the applicants and took 60 instead. Many other firms have similar flexibility in the numbers they take; let’s use it.

And as to those very odd words ‘bully pulpit’: Bully hardly sounds like the sort of thing Labour would sign up to. Wikipedia rides to the rescue: it seems that when President Roosevelt coined the phrase, he understood bully to mean superb or wonderful. Sounds good!