Since when did retail stores offer apprenticeships?

[Soubriquet]

A well known shop on the high street is offering apprenticeships at £6 an hour.

They are boasting about offering a customer service practitioner skill level 2 or retail diploma level 2

Since when did people need these sort of skills in the work place?

Are they just trying to cheap out on wages?

Well, I'm 46 and a school friend did one at 18
I don't know what he got paid though but he stayed with the store and became manager

Since they started having to pay the apprenticeship levy I assume.

It's cheap labour and a lot of major chains will have set up their own private training arm so they can claim back the levy as funding as well as making a saving by employing apprentices in a lower wage than NMW.

There are loads of apprenticeships like this.

www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship

Could it be something to do with staying in education of some description until 18? You can be on an apprenticeship like you describe getting a qualification and be considered in education, not just going on to college, so maybe it's to open up opportunities like that to those who don't want to go to college and get a job?

Over 5 years now ateast , I applied for several a couple of years back, but didn't get the role sadly.

I worked in apprenticeships for a while and we stopped offering the retail apprenticeship a few years ago as there wasn’t the demand. However the supermarket opposite offered them.

I have worked on the new customer service apprenticeship and it is quite challenging.

Sadly, there are organisations that do use apprenticeships as cheap labour but nowadays there does need to be much more employer input than previously so the employer does really need to be committed to the apprenticeship scheme.

I honestly didn’t expect this sort of apprenticeships.

In places that actually require a skill like mechanics, child care, yeah.

But not a high street shop.

How odd

This takes the biscuit- 15 months to learn bar tending and waitressing. This was something you learnt in 2/3 hours for a weekend job when I was a teenager!

Perhaps it will set them up though, a step in the door, experience early on and help them get into shop management and beyond?

Over twenty years ago I knew people who did Youth Training Scheme in a high street retailer for a pound an hour. It seemed like a way to get cheap labour then, as although those who completed it got full paid jobs, it wasn't clear it was of any advantage to just having got older.

I hadn’t worked for 16 years. I was struggling to get someone to hire me so I considered an apprenticeship a perfectly sensible and viable route to getting some up to date work experience, references and rel. qualms. I saw it as an investment in myself. I didn’t get mine (TA in a special school) and I was gutted at the time. I had previously applied for many retail jobs and not even been interviewed. I would have been happy to get an apprenticeship in retail. Not sure why people are so snotty about them…

Relevant quals! No qualms 😉

So no skills needed for retail? 😳
What a bizarre opinion.

So they can get a ready supply of dirt cheap labour at below NMW.

@Dontfuckingsaycheese

So no skills needed for retail? 😳 What a bizarre opinion.

Not really

I’ve worked numerous retail jobs and never needed “experience” for it. You learn in the job

That bar one isn’t too bad. Over £200 a week for 30 hours

@over2021

Since they started having to pay the apprenticeship levy I assume.

It's cheap labour and a lot of major chains will have set up their own private training arm so they can claim back the levy as funding as well as making a saving by employing apprentices in a lower wage than NMW.

This

@Soubriquet

I honestly didn’t expect this sort of apprenticeships.

In places that actually require a skill like mechanics, child care, yeah.

But not a high street shop.

How odd

You can do all sorts of apprenticeships and not just for technical stuff. I did one through work in operations management - level 5 diploma and including modules on project management, finance, leading high performing teams etc.

@Dontfuckingsaycheese

So no skills needed for retail? 😳 What a bizarre opinion.

There are very few skills needed to be a basic retail assistant - and I say that as someone who worked in retail for a decade and did over five years at the "bottom of the ladder".

Yes, if you want to advance and go into management then absolutely there are skills required there, but otherwise you just learn on the job.

OP you are coming across very rude .

They have done for years (they are called modern apprenticeships). I did one through work in about 2010 when I was a teenager, everyone had to do it. I also did an apprenticeship in business administration for two years - people thinks it pointless but it has come in handy, despite having a degree also.

@Soubriquet

I honestly didn’t expect this sort of apprenticeships.

In places that actually require a skill like mechanics, child care, yeah.

But not a high street shop.

How odd

Hmmm, maybe retailers are starting to respond to the complaints about poor customer service and training their staff rather than them learning on the job? There's been a few threads just on here about poor customer service and I see a lot of complaining online in general about 'standards', so clearly the traditional methods aren't working are they?

Customer service is simultaneously important and not valued as a skill - so not valued or skilled enough to require any specific skills or training and the school of thought that when that's offered it's 'odd', but important enough for people to get extremely irate when the service is poor and complain bitterly, demanding that it improves.

Many people want and expect more than just buying something from a shop and getting the item they're paying for from a polite member of staff, many want an 'experience', to be fawned over and pandered too.

20 years ago I did an NVQ Level 2 in customer service while working at a retailer as a supervisor. Mine was the other way round, I was earning a normal salary (a whopping £8000 a year for 60 hours a week - I kid you not, I was 17 so they could get away with it and I was salaried not hourly rated). The college approached the business and all staff under 22 to do the course for free. £6 an hour for an apprentice is a cracking wage when under 18's minimum wage is £4.81.

Many people want and expect more than just buying something from a shop and getting the item they're paying for from a polite member of staff, many want an 'experience', to be fawned over and pandered too.

Good lord, I can't think of anything worse

Maybe that's why I wasn't cut out for retail in the end, lol.

Plus a level 2 NVQ is the same level as a GCSE and some kids don't have any of those, so it's a good opportunity for them to earn while getting a recognised qualifications.

@Maverickess depends on the shop and how much you’re spending, surely? I nipped in Superdrug today and was quite happy to have the 10 quids worth of stuff chucked in a bag, scan my card and leave. Last week, I went in the Apple store and got a new iPad, I expected a bit more in the way of customer service (and got it) as I was spending over £500. As long as staff aren’t actively rude/ignore me, I don’t mind.

I don’t think an apprenticeship is appropriate in all roles.