Each winner of the HR Excellence Awards has proven their impact on business by backing up their award-winning strategies with facts and figures.
Here's how the Mitie team overhauled its approach to early careers with a transformative apprenticeship strategy, which linked directly to the company's wider social goals.
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Best Early Careers Strategy: Mitie
An ageing workforce can be a silent killer for any organisation. If it goes unnoticed, it can open a potential skills gap into a chasm.
When leaders of Mitie, the UK’s largest facilities management company and employer to 68,000, realised that it faced a critical skills gap in the engineering arm of the business, driven by a wave of retirements and an ageing engineer population, they sprang into action.
Just months after identifying the problem, Mitie’s Engineering Apprenticeship Academy launched. Onboarding more than 150 engineering apprentices over two years, it is expected to take on another 100 before the next financial year.
Mitie had no shortage of ambition setting up the scheme. Hoping to create a knowledge bridge between its ageing engineers and the new generation, it also wanted to use the opportunity to boost diversity in its workforce and create a scheme to support apprentices through every stage of their qualification with maximum retention.
With a UK-wide apprenticeship drop-out rate of 47%, Mitie placed a big bet on its HR team’s ability to deliver.
The team paid back that faith.
Mitie’s HR team secured the scheme as a force for social good, recognising that by getting a varied mix of experiences and perspectives it could build a vibrant, inclusive culture from the bottom up.
Encouraging existing apprentices to use their volunteer days to speak to school children at career days, Mitie also established links between schools and its ethnic diversity employee resource group and the company’s charitable foundation. Every applicant applying through these links is guaranteed an interview.
Accompanied by a targeted recruitment campaign, the drive has seen Mitie double the number of female apprentices on its programmes. Now, 14% of its apprentices come from ethnically diverse backgrounds, compared with just 9% of UK engineers overall.
Supporting these new recruits was paramount. Not only did the Mitie team train line managers, it also implemented a central apprenticeship team to give dedicated training and pastoral support to the apprentices.
Recognising that young people often rely on peer networks, the firm created internal digital networks for the apprentices to talk and share ideas.
Further support outside the organisation comes from membership to the Association of Apprentices, which Mitie provided for free.
Connecting apprentices with mentors, the firm likewise provides career planning resources throughout the scheme.
Mitie does not spend all this time and money thoughtlessly. Reporting monthly to the executive leadership team, the firm’s apprenticeship team tracks ROI from learning providers, and actively funnels apprentices into skills gaps as they open up.
The programme has been a stunning success. Nine in 10 (90%) of the apprentices that have joined since 2020 were still employed by Mitie in 2023; 100% of those completing the programme were offered a job.
The scheme has proved so popular that two other businesses within Mitie have identified skills challenges and copied the programme, launching their own schemes.
Perhaps the greatest sign of success, however, was from the apprentices themselves: 89% said they would recommend it to friends, family or co-workers. The Mitie HR team couldn’t wish for more.
To enter the HR Excellence Awards, or to continue an existing entry, click here. The deadline for entry is 6pm, Friday 23 August.