The New Formula for Workforce and Talent Development: Inclusive Partnerships, Braided Funding, and Career-Aligned Training
Ronald L. Jacobs, Ph.D.
SiTUATE, LLC.
I recently attended a conference in Columbus, Ohio focusing on workforce development and AI, and apprenticeships was clearly the most discussed topic related to work-based learning. That apprenticeships should receive this level of attention should not surprise many readers here. No other strategy is better suited for helping individuals enter the workforce with a recognized sets of skills. And no other strategy seems as practical and relevant from the perspective of employers as well. The Department of Labor reports that from 2019 through 2022, 2.8 million participants were registered in apprenticeship programs, a significant upsurge from previous years. This number actually seems somewhat conservative to say the least, as many apprenticeships may not be formally reported.
Apprenticeships have long played a major role in how societies have passed along critical sets of skills from one generation to the next. In medieval Europe saw the development of guilds and the meister system, especially in central Europe. In China, apprenticeships and craft guilds date back to the Qin dynasty of 200 B.C. And of course, let’s not forget that Paul Revere, well-known for his exploits to signal the arrival of the British during the American Revolution was, in fact, an apprentice silversmith to his father.
Today, apprenticeship programs extend well beyond the traditional trades. There are now registered apprenticeships across most every middle occupation – those jobs requiring more than a high school diploma and less than a four-year or advanced degree. And even the understanding of a middle occupation seems dated. Given sufficient demand, nearly every occupation might now be subject to the development of a registered apprenticeship program.
My interest in apprenticeships comes from my long interest in work-based learning, specifically structured on-the-job training, and my early experiences and understanding of competency-based instruction. That’s why in my current consultant role, we focus on helping clients design, implement, evaluate, and manage competency-based apprenticeship programs. In brief, competency-based apprenticeships lead to greater accountability on what trainees should learn and reduce the apprenticeship cycle time, among many other desirable outcomes.
When registering an apprenticeship, planners are often given a somewhat false choice when indicating the preferred learning term, whether the apprenticeship is competency-based, time-based, or hybrid-based approach. In a practical sense, how can an apprenticeship not be competency based when skills are involved? Competency-based is not a choice, but descriptive of standard practice. Admittedly, a competency-based approach requires more planning and involves professional skills, such as job analysis, that many planners and employers simply don’t possess, which makes a time-based approach seemingly more attractive. And even the meaning of a competency-based apprenticeship causes confusion.
Here's a list of actions we believe important when developing a competency-based apprenticeship program:
- Develop useful job and occupational standards
- Adapt an established occupational standard to an employer setting
- Translate the standards to the related instruction and OJT
- Identify the related instruction and link it to tasks to be learned
- Conduct an analysis of the tasks to be learned
- Develop experienced employees as mentors
- Prepare learning plans for each apprentice
- Plan and deliver the OJT using S-OJT not traditional OJT
- Ensure that prerequisites are completed before the S-OJT occurs
- Manage the apprenticeship system through a digital platform
- Assist employers to use the approach with current employees
- Evaluate the outcomes of the program for each stakeholder
The list suggests that apprenticeships should be more than simply recruiting students and placing them with willing host employers. In many occupations, the consequences are too high to not take the apprenticeship as seriously as possible. Here’s an on-going project to consider.
We’re now involved with the waste-water treatment system of a large metropolitan city to develop two competency-based operator apprenticeship programs. The community expects and demands that the water used will be properly recovered, treated, and then made available back to them for safe use. Anything less would be unacceptable, and meeting this challenge has become even more difficult in the current context. Many experienced operators in such facilities are of retirement age, and finding and developing replacements, who are able to function following new guidelines and advanced technology, has become a challenge of immense proportions. We look forward to reporting more about this project in the future, because we hope it will provide a great learning opportunity for others to see how it’s done.
The American Institutes for Research has recently reported that apprenticeship completion rates are about 35 percent, suggesting that most apprentices, for whatever reasons, never finish what they started and miss out receiving the all-important credential. Calls for greater attention to the personal needs and emotional support of apprentices have followed these reports, which makes much sense given the inherent challenges of any extensive learning experience. My belief is that beyond the needs of the individuals, we should also attend to the design of the programs themselves which we believe impacts completion rates. After all, when the program focuses on training effectiveness and encourages learning accomplishment, apprentices are less likely to experience unnecessary frustration and anxiety, making the experience all the more engaging and beneficial.
Author Bio: After a distinguished academic career at Ohio State University and the University of Illinois, Ron Jacobs, Ph.D., is now principal of SiTUATE, LLC., a consulting firm that focuses on innovative work-based learning and performance solutions.
