Part 2: Managing Your Apprenticeship

Zach Boren; Bhavani Arabandi; Myca San Miguel; Rayanne Hawkins

Body

Once you’ve registered your apprenticeship, the next steps are to recruit, hire, and onboard apprentices. You should also fund your program, register in RAPIDS, build a success plan, establish a training program, and start enacting the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) requirements. Some steps in this section do not need to happen in chronological order.

Recruitment is key to filling your organization’s talent needs and ensuring a diverse pool of candidates from which you can select your apprentices.

Resources

Use these resources to recruit veterans, women, people with disabilities, and underrepresented populations:

• outreach and recruitment strategies
• EEO—outreach and recruitment resources
• recruiting veterans and service members
• universal outreach tool (DOL)

Body

Hiring best practices will provide you with guidelines to align your program with your organization’s equity and inclusion policies.

Resources (coming soon)

Urban will provide a resource on best practices for hiring in early 2023.

Body

You can benefit from federal and state funding, including the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act (WIOA), the GI bill, and tax credits to support apprenticeship programs.

Resources

• State-level funding: Some states offer a tax credit for hiring apprentices or tuition support for registered apprentices’ training costs.
• WIOA: The WIOA helps job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services to succeed in the labor market and matches employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy. You can find more information here.
• Periodically, the DOL announces grants and contracts that expand the availability of apprenticeship funding.
• Find more federal funding sources for apprentices, including funding from the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Agriculture.

Body

The DOL has reporting requirements for your program in RAPIDS.

Resources

The RAPIDS 2.0 sponsor guide lays out the reporting requirements. It also walks you through setting up your account and uploading the required reporting information.

Body

Having an apprenticeship onboarding and success plan will ensure your program’s ability to identify issues as they arise and provide assistance to help improve your apprentices’ performance and completion rates. Onboarding youth apprentices or those who may be rejoining the workforce or switching careers can involve unique circumstances that should be considered.

Resources

Onboarding youth apprentices can impact an apprentice’s learning, engagement, and retention. This resource provides a framework for sponsors and employers building their apprentice onboarding processes in the workplace. It includes step-by-step instructions on how to effectively onboard apprentices, from preparing the organization before launching a new apprenticeship program to welcoming apprentices and setting them up for future success.

Body

A mentor training program will allow your senior employees to be effective mentors.

Resources

Urban’s mentor guide and mentor training games are tools provided to help you with your mentoring needs.

• Urban’s mentor guide has been developed for experienced workers who teach and advise youth apprentices at work. It provides tips for mentors, guidance on common mentoring topics, frequently asked questions, and links to resources. This tool is a handy reference guide and should be paired with other learning and preparation for mentors in executing effective apprenticeship programs.
• Mentor games are tools to help you with your mentoring needs. Ballou Communications and Opportunity America developed these 5- to 10-minute interactive training games in consultation with Urban and the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence.
• Urban’s mentor training parts 1 and 2 are additional resources for mentoring your apprentices. In these trainings, we introduced mentors of youth apprentices to ideas and best practices drawn from research on work-based teaching and learning and adolescent development.

Body

Every organization must comply with DOL regulations for Equal Employment Opportunity. You might already be in compliance with some of these as part of your organization’s policy.

RAP sponsors must comply with DOL regulations for EEO. The rules set expectations for sponsors related to apprentices’ recruitment and training. Although the EEO rules may appear complicated, they are similar or identical to many employers’ existing practices, policies, and legal requirements and help ensure programs access and retain diverse talent.

Resources

This fact sheet is a quick guide to help clarify EEO regulations for sponsors.

Body

Next section:

Body