# Developing a New Apprenticeship Program



## Southeast Power (Jan 18, 2009)

Why are you trying to re-invent the wheel?
There is the best, and then, all the rest. 

Give it up!!


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## Rora (Jan 31, 2017)

gamecock said:


> the jobs are travel based and there is a lot of turnover when the good ones realize that they can take off to the Gulf for $$$$.


I agree with Southeast Power in the sense that you don't need to re-invent the wheel, but I think you've identified a pain point that should be addressed, and that is... if this business is so into training guys up, how are they protecting their investment? I imagine this is a problem for many apprenticeship training programs.

There's two ways I see of dealing with this... first being to play hardball and involve some form of collateral to yourself, but I don't like this solution because it steps on peoples toes and would be very difficult to get the full value you put in anyways, not to mention that taking a hardline approach should be the last option.

The second method is to incentivise employees to stay, the easiest of course being to just pay them more assuming you're not going to actually make the working conditions that much more attractive. However, this is probably just not something that the company will approve, there is not enough of a business reason for it in their eyes as they may prefer just to eat the lost value once in a while as a cost of doing business instead of paying employees more forever.

You want an out of the box idea and here's one which may be easier to sell to the bean counters: a vested raise based on how long they've worked there that comes into effect upon journeyman status, or whenever the person becomes valuable such that they leave the company and take all your training investment with them. This can be presented as being merited upon seniority, when it's based on protecting your training investment, in reality, it's both.

The business guys will say, well, aren't you still paying people more, just later on? Fair point. Considering that this company is being so charitable to train up new people, perhaps it's not totally unfair, then, to scale the pay more aggressively towards the top end... meaning, new people would get paid less, but with the contractually protected understanding that they will receive an even bigger dividend if they stay with the company. This would not be just added to, say, a journeyman who came in at that level, but specifically for people who got trained there and stuck around.

You'd have to run the numbers on what works out, but you could probably afford to make it pretty attractive considering that you're drawing from both people who will stay *and* people who will leave to contribute to the payoff, and that is why this is still fair towards people who come in with existing skills, because it's not ultimately not really drawing out of their paycheck (you may lose potential there as they may balk at the idea, but as you say this company wants to train up their own workforce then its still cost-benefit positive for them). If people receive training then leave, they've penalized themselves accordingly, if people stay they get their own penalty paid back plus the person who left, and this should be pretty good assuming their base pay at that point is commensurate with value.

This would also disencourage people who were planning on leaving from the get go from joining the company. A company who is generous with its training could draw a lot of potentials in, but they'd have to think hard about whether they're really going to be committed in a way equal to what the company is committing to them... and if they are, they'll end up with more than they would have otherwise.

If I saw myself potentially staying with a company, it'd be pretty sweet to lose $2/hr for level 1 (pulling numbers out of the sky here) which only lasts a year and then make $2 more for years and years after reaching the tipping point... it would seem a pay structure like that would lead to you getting and keeping the right people, and naturally cultivate a skilled workforce long term.

A key factor in whether this could work would be that you would have to make it clear, possibly prove with open numbers, that everything is being redistributed and that it isn't just some scam to get away with paying new guys less and pocketing it. It might be hard to take off because there's nobody around who benefits from it for a while... this could be solved by starting the payoff earlier and scale with time as well, for instance -$.50 the first year and +$.50 the second so the difference is realized sooner but in a lesser amount. Once you get people past a tipping point and the system is considered to work, tweak or increase the values to increase the retention effect. You could also not make it so extreme that people simply cant afford the pinch of getting started.


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## just the cowboy (Sep 4, 2013)

The main thing is to make sure the training and worked hours are documented. 
Are they going to be done in different states?
No matter what you do, people will leave with your training investment.
I assume non union.
Are you paying for the schooling or reimbursing them? 
Think about reimbursing them in lump sums over a few years after completion, lump sum money looks better to most than $ per hours.


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## Bird dog (Oct 27, 2015)

just the cowboy said:


> Are you paying for the schooling or reimbursing them?


...with a passing grade of C or better.


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