Harry Leech, Director of Strategy and Program Development at Apprenticeships For America, on Making Apprenticeship Simpler

Intro

In this episode of "Making Apprenticeship Simpler," host Patrick Cushing and Harry Leech delve into the complexities and opportunities within the US apprenticeship system. Harry Leech, the newly appointed Director of Strategy at Apprenticeships for America, brings a fresh perspective rooted in his extensive experience with the UK's developed apprenticeship programs. Together, they explore actionable insights to simplify apprenticeships despite the inherent complexities of meeting diverse stakeholder needs. From streamlining funding processes to modernizing registration systems and enhancing information networks, Harry identifies key areas for improvement in the US apprenticeship landscape. Join us as we discuss how to make apprenticeships more accessible and efficient, ensuring a robust future for workforce development.

Highlights

• Primary Question: How to Make Apprenticeships Simpler?

• Overarching complexity of apprenticeship systems

• Importance of safeguards, controls, and intentions of system participants

• First Area: Funding

• Current funding complexity: federal, state, and local grants

• Barriers due to competitive grants and paperwork

• Suggestions for improvement: formula-based approach and outcome-based funding

• Second Area: Registration System

• Current issues with registration: manual processes and long approval times

• Suggestions for improvement: automated systems and pre-approved standards

• Third Area: System Navigation

• Localized nature of apprenticeship information

• Difficulty for new entrants: building local networks

• Suggestions for improvement: organized local networks, national sources, and lists of providers and intermediaries

• Closing Thoughts and Reflections

• Recap on complexity and the inherent challenge in simplifying the system

• Importance of balancing the needs of employers, funding bodies, and learners

• Acknowledgment that there are existing models in other countries that work well

Transcript

Patrick Cushing:

All right, Harry, thanks for joining us. I appreciate you taking the time out to chat a little bit about the apprenticeship system in the US. First things first, why don't you give a quick introduction for everybody? Give a sense of who you are and what your experience is in the apprenticeship world.

Harry Leech:

Sure. Hey, Patrick, good to see you. I'm Harry Leech, I'm the director of strategy at Apprenticeships for America, which is a national charity membership organization, working to help scale up apprenticeships. I've been at apprenticeships for America for about a month, but I spent the majority of my career in the UK government working on skills funding, including apprenticeships. So I've done a lot on the kind of setting up program, sorting out different funding streams, allocating budgets, that sort of thing. I have much more UK experience in a quite developed apprenticeship system, and I'm starting to dig into and find out more about the US system in the last couple of months.

Patrick Cushing:

Fantastic. Well, certainly, we'll want to do another one of these in a year when you've been in the role deeply, but it's always great to get someone with a fresh mind. I would love to know, a month in working with AFA with all your experience in the UK, how do we make apprenticeships simpler? And I think you'll have a really unique perspective on this, so I can't wait to hear what you have to provide.

Harry Leech:

I'll be very interested to see if I say the same thing in a year. Hopefully I don't, because we've picked some of these issues. In terms of making apprenticeships simpler, I'd say three things. First, I'd preface all of this with, this is always going to be quite a complex system. You're trying to meet the needs of businesses. You're trying to protect the value of public money. You're trying to meet the needs of learners. You're always going to have to have safeguards, controls. There's always going to be complexity, but we can definitely do a better job. And also, everyone in the system has good intentions, has the right motivations. The current system's complexity is a product of that, in a way. But everyone's trying to do the right thing.

Harry Leech:

So, three areas. First one, we think by far the biggest opportunity is on funding. You can find funding to cover the cost of an apprenticeship. There are grants -- federal grants, state grants, local grants. It's an incredibly complicated patchwork of competitive grants you have to bid for. There's intermediaries out there, providers, who end up braiding together loads of different pots of money to get the funding together to pay for the cost of training and support. It's a real barrier to making the system work. It's really difficult to get employers on board if you can't clearly say, "here's how we can cover the costs of training."

Harry Leech:

It's a barrier to getting new people involved in the system. When you're funding things through competitive, cyclical grants, they go to people who are good at writing bids, not necessarily the people who are good at delivering outcomes. At the moment, they're geared towards the existing players as a startup barrier. We hear a lot from our members, "we can get the funding. It is possible, but it's not really worth it. It's too much work. It will take our team 80 hours to do the paperwork." So at the moment, we're spending a huge amount of time on administration that could be spent on growing apprenticeships. I think the good news is there are better ways to do it.

Harry Leech:

We're advocates for a formula-based approach, for a model where you're paying per apprentice. You're paying for the actual outcomes and focusing on that rather than paperwork. I think the second reflection I have in comparison to the UK is the registration system and the way that we recognize a qualification. In the US, there's lots that's really attractive. Because it's bespoke, you can tailor it to what every employer needs individually. It can be really accommodating to really particular needs, but at the same time, it's hugely administrative. It can take anything from 30 days to a year to get a program registered. I think our big problem right now is it's a very manual process. Every single program that's being created, you're jumping through the same loops. Then we end up repeating the same process a thousand times for what are very similar programs. You could do it once -- make things a lot simpler with a far more automatic system where you've got pre approved building blocks of standards you can pull together. You can still have choice, but make that approval process far, far easier. Now it feels very analog in a digital age.

Harry Leech:

The third and final thought on simplification is about the kind of the system and how you find out about what's going on and navigate it. Based on my experience in the last month, there's loads of really exciting things going on, lots of exciting programs, intermediaries doing interesting things, but it's a very tricky system to get into. It's incredibly localized. To figure out what's going on, you need to build like a local network. Say you wanted to start a new program. How do you find the RI provider, the intermediary in that area? At the moment, you've got to know the people in the know. For an employer who's new to this whole thing, it's tough. You've just got to coincidentally, by chance, meet the right people.

Harry Leech:

System wise, there's good stuff we can do. We need better information -- like organized local networks -- but national sources. We need a list of the providers, intermediaries in your areas that are already up and running. I think those are the three things. Lots of complexity, but, a lot of opportunities to make things simpler. The good news is it's not reinventing the wheel. A lot of these things have been done in other countries. They work well.

Harry Leech:

There's good tried and tested models.

Patrick Cushing:

Fantastic. Oftentimes when I do these calls, I'll ask people as a follow up, if you had a magic wand, you could address some of these issues. What would you do? You kind of hit each and every single one of those. So instead of that, I actually just want to have you revisit the first thing you said and repeat it because I think that's fantastic. Certainly these calls are about how to make apprenticeships simpler, but anything, any investment that's going to lead to a return has some complexity. So if you just actually just close this by admitting yeah, the goal is to make it simpler, but there's going to be some complexity. Can you repeat those thoughts? I think those were fantastic. Just as a start in this, you should expect there's some work, and then I would love to hear in your own words one more time.

Harry Leech:

Sure. You're never going to have a completely simple user experience based system in a world like this because you're trying to meet so many different people's needs. You've got to fulfill the needs of the employer -- they're an employer, but also a customer for training. You've got to fulfill the needs of state, local, federal funding agencies who are putting money into this. They're putting public money behind this and are going to have a lot of requirements. You've got to meet the needs of, most importantly, the individuals that are going to be diverse and different. It's always going to be tricky. Some of those things are going to bash up against each other from time to time, but within that, we can definitely do a better job of making things easier for those key players than we do now.

Patrick Cushing:

Fantastic. Love it. Harry, thank you for coming on. Thank you for giving that sort of perspective that you bring over from past experience. We'll let you go, but looking forward to hearing what you have to say a year or two from now and you know a little bit more about what's going on in the US.

Harry Leech:

Sure, no problem. Thanks again, Patrick.