Enhancing Leadership Capabilities in Higher Education through Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships provide an opportunity to enhance leadership and management capabilities for Higher Education staff.
The impact of good managers and leadership
Hopefully we can all recall an amazing manager or leader that we have worked with in the past and the positive impact that they had on us. The support of a great leader can have many benefits, from improving our motivation and job satisfaction to empowering us in our work, to helping us feel valued and respected to safeguard our loyalty to the organisation. This isn’t just a feeling though; this is backed up by a wealth of research showing increases in performance, productivity, and retention of those working for good managers and the real impact that this has for organisations.
In the last few years, we have witnessed exponential change in the workplace not just because of Covid-19 but also due to external factors such as:
developments in technology;
changes in workforce demographics with a multi-generational workforce;
the cost-of-living crisis;
global uncertainty due to conflict and war;
and changing attitudes to health and wellbeing.
We will all need the skills to navigate this ever-evolving workplace and now more than ever will require strong and agile leadership and management to help employees to adapt and respond. Managers will need to be given the time and the training to support their teams and to bring about continuous improvement and transformational change.
This is a big challenge which will take time and investment, but we need to focus on improving our leadership capabilities if we want to drive our organisations forward. This commitment was the start of our journey in introducing our Leadership and Management Professional Development programmes to 80 of our managers at UCL.
Existing Leadership Provision cannot meet demand
The UCL leadership development provision is exceptional, we have a range of professional development programmes for managers at different stages of their career and highly regarded positive action programmes such as Women in Leadership, Senior Women in Leadership and Emerging Leaders. The quality and effectiveness of this training is seen in the exceptional NPS results as well as the demand for programmes which were oversubscribed each year. We knew that there was more to do to be able to expand the leadership opportunities for our staff, especially to those from our academic and technical communities who had limited opportunity to develop their leadership and management skills.
Additional leadership and management programmes needed to complement our existing provision. We wanted to provide an opportunity for greater numbers of colleagues to professionalise their leadership roles through formal training. Managers were looking to build their theoretical understanding and embed this learning through practical application which would see an immediate impact for themselves, their department, and the organisation.
In addition to this, we recognised that we wanted to develop our transformational capabilities to manage the ever-changing landscape and support our Strategic Plan which set out a programme of change to deliver our 2034 Vision and Mission. We recognised that equipping people with the skills and knowledge to successfully motivate and support their teams through transformational change should allow us to support staff wellbeing, performance and retention and provide a workforce that aligns with our future organisational needs. We considered how we might we use apprenticeships to support this aim.
Misconceptions about apprenticeships need to be challenged
In a world where apprenticeships are often seen as an alternative provision to university for young people, it is often challenging for colleagues in the HE Sector to understand their relevance to our staff and organisations. The introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy in 2017 allowed provision for young people looking for a route into employment but this also opened opportunities for employers to develop their existing workforce. There were many misconceptions at the time about apprenticeships and these remain today. Many still believe that apprenticeships are only for school leavers without the motivation for Higher Education who typically work in the trades. Whilst these apprenticeships are still on offer and provide amazing opportunities for young people to develop their skills and knowledge and secure a successful career in these areas, apprenticeships are now much broader.
We have been working hard within UCL to break down these misconceptions and now we are seeing the benefits of this. We have set ourselves a goal to have 5% of our workforce on apprenticeships by 2027 and we are on track to meet this target.
With apprenticeships on offer at all educational levels up to Level 7(equivalent to a Masters level qualification) we have an opportunity for existing staff to develop their knowledge, skills and expertise to support their career progression. It doesn’t stop there though. We recognise that recruiting staff as apprentices to work with us brings many benefits: it helps us to grow our own talent, fill skills gaps, brings in fresh and new perspectives and allows us to support the development of a more diverse workforce. By developing our managers and leaders through an apprenticeship, we can grow those that will advocate for the recruitment of young people including some of our own graduates into our workforce. This will support us in reaching our 5% target.
Apprenticeships are not easy; they require hard work and dedication. Those that are recruited into our organisation as apprentices have a greater chance of a successful outcome with the support of good managers. This was another factor in considering development of our leadership and management capabilities, to ensure that our managers can provide a positive experience for the apprentices of the future as they join our workforce.
How we introduced the concept of apprenticeships as a solution
With the knowledge that we could use apprenticeship programmes to support the professional development of our staff to improve our management capabilities we started by speaking with our colleagues to understand their requirements and to gauge interest. We arranged Insight sessions to break down the misconceptions of apprenticeships and presented the opportunity that the apprenticeships provided to them for professional development and to gain a recognised leadership qualification. They were particularly impressed by a programme that provided the opportunity for practical application as they could see this as an effective way to embed their learning and an immediate return on the time investment for their departments. We used the Insight sessions to gain a better understanding of the delivery model to suit their needs and what they were looking for from a programme. We then spoke to a range of training providers and selected one that met our requirements.
It was important to our colleagues that the training provider understood our sector and was experienced in working with other universities. Our training provider Corndel partner with Imperial College Business School to deliver their Executive Development Programme and had experience of working with a number of universities to deliver leadership programmes.
Over the course of several months, we arranged sessions for prospective learners and line managers so that they fully understood the programmes and their commitment over the 12- 14 months of the programme. Lessons learnt from other apprenticeship development programmes showed that providing a full understanding of the programme and complete transparency about the expected commitment from the apprentice and their line manager improved the chances of a successful outcome.
To be fully supportive, line managers were asked to discuss and review the workloads of the applicants and adjust these accordingly, seeing where tasks can be reassigned and deprioritised. We were also open about the ongoing time commitment of the manager to work with the apprentice and the training provider to ensure that projects and work assigned to the learner aligns with the requirements of the apprenticeship.
It isn’t all straightforward, there are specific rules set out by the funding body which include residency and visa requirements, meaning that not all colleagues may be eligible to access these programmes. The requirement to complete functional skills in English and Maths without GCSE evidence is problematic for many of our staff that have been educated overseas and where their qualifications (even at PhD level) do not automatically provide exemption from completing the additional functional skills qualification.
The start of the application process was an Internal Expression of Interest. Just because our Apprenticeship Levy funds allowed us to offer unlimited places it didn’t mean we should. For us it is not about increasing numbers of apprentices and spending the levy, apprenticeships are a tool to solve a problem and our driver is to provide opportunities where they would have the greatest impact for us as an organisation.
The applicant and their line manager were asked to indicate what impact the programme would have for the individual, department and UCL. We asked for them to reflect on how they would manage their time and juggle the demands of the programme and we sought confirmation from their line manager about how they would continue to support the apprentice. We also asked the applicant to indicate projects that they were interested in developing for their End Point Assessment so we could judge the overall impact for UCL and the scalability of these projects across the organisation. Expressions of Interest were reviewed, and successful applications were passed to the training provider for onboarding to one of 2 programmes: Level 7 Senior Leader or Level 5 Department/ Operations Manager.
We finally were able to launch the programmes in January 2024, this was as the result of 14 months discussion including those with Corndel to be able to adapt the training to provide a bespoke solution for UCL. We were insistent that the launch was in person. There was such an energy at the launch event where participants were engaged and excited to get started on the programme. Apprentices heard from the Vice President – Operations who is the sponsor for this programme about the importance we place on this programme and the need for UCL to invest in the continuous professional development of our staff.
Our aims for the Leadership and Management Professional Development Programmes at UCL
After 5 weeks that energy remains. Learners are enjoying the opportunity for self-reflection and to develop their understanding of theories, they are looking forward to the workshops that will run each term, some of which will be in person which helps them to build relationships within the learning community. Although the majority of the programme is online which offers the apprentices the opportunity to manage their time flexibly, I have already witnessed the incredible collegiality of the apprentices and their willingness to learn from and support each other. Monthly network meetings which are online along with an online Teams space where they can share experiences and resources, ask and answer questions has been full of suggestions, comments and support and encouragement.
It isn’t all perfect and some have really struggled to manage the demands on their time. The programme can sometimes feel overwhelming, and it won’t be easy. I am hoping with the ongoing support of the other apprentices, their development coach from the training provider, their line manager and me the apprentices will find techniques to continue with their learning, quickly see the benefits of developing the skills and continue to learn and grow within their leadership and management roles.
There is a lot riding on this pilot, we hope to be able to offer this on an annual or biannual basis and reach more of our 16000 staff. The projects that learners and managers identified within their areas provide the opportunity to deliver improvements to staff and student experience, deliver efficiencies in our organisation and support our strategic plan.
Final thoughts
I would urge HE professionals to contribute to conversations about apprenticeships in their own organisations and how these will support the future needs of the organisation and the sector. There are a group of active and passionate Apprenticeship Managers within HR teams in universities that are working hard to grow apprenticeships across the sector and would welcome a conversation about how you could support and benefit from this important initiative.
