Less than 50% of apprentices will complete their trade qualification.

No, you didn’t misread the subject line, less than 50% of apprentices Australia wide complete their trade.

WA fares slightly better with 57% of apprentices undertaking automotive, engineering, construction and electrical trades actually seeing out their 4 year qualification.

There is no doubt this is impacting the skills shortage, and your ability to grow your organisation.

In the 12 months ending March 2023,  2,815 apprentices commenced an automotive trade in WA. From those numbers only 1,689 will likely complete based upon trend data supplied by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research.

I’ve seen the strengths and weaknesses of the apprenticeship experience from both a professional and personal perspective.   I have 2 sons who’ve both completed automotive trade apprenticeships in recent years. When I told them of these stats one said “I had a few cobbas I went to TAFE with drop out because they didn’t like doing sh*t jobs” “It’s those jobs that make you though”

What if those jobs were re-framed? What if your leaders and apprentice masters could re-frame the work to engage greater motivation? What would that look like?

Everybody needs purpose and meaning to their work, educating employees and leaders how to translate this into employee engagement is our jam. It’s what we live for.

And it’s not just blue collar trades with terrible non-completion rates. Only 41% of business services trainees, 60% of community services trainees and 40% of hairdressers complete their training.

So, the elephant in the room. where is it going wrong?

Experts say poor work conditions, bullying and low wages are the leading factors contributing to high non-completion rates.

What do we think? Workplace culture ➡️ leadership & the way employees experience working for you.

When looking to improve business results where do leaders spend most of their time? 26% on workplace culture and 74% on strategy.

What has the most impact on business results?

96% culture, 4% strategy.

You can take a strategic approach to the skills shortage by putting more and more people through training, or you can have an intentional focus on workplace culture and leverage employee engagement and experience strategies to reach the untapped potential in your workforce.

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If you would like a strategic approach tailored to your specific business needs contact us to arrange an obligation free chat about how we can help.Through impactful HR we create a positive employee experience every time.We aim to create future-focused, people centred HR solutions to accelerate organisational and employee wellbeing, engagement and performance by making HR easy.

THE PEOPLE & CULTURE OFFICE SUPPORTS HR TEAMS AND ORGANISATIONS AUSTRALIA-WIDE TO TAKE A FRESH APPROACH TOWARDS THEIR PEOPLE AND CULTURE FUNCTION.