Overview
Your Manager will play a key role in ensuring you get the most out of your apprenticeship. For candidates who are applying for an apprenticeship to enhance skills alongside their current role, you must let your manager know you are applying and have a conversation to set clear expectations around how you will incorporate learning into your role.
General Questions
Once you start your application, we’ll send your manager some questions to confirm you have the right tools and support in place to succeed in your apprenticeship. Please review the content below to understand more about what we will ask your manager about you and your apprenticeship.
Incorporating your Off The Job (OTJ) time into your working week
What is Off-The-Job (OTJ) training?
Off-the-job training, or OTJ, is a great opportunity for you to apply your learnings directly in your day-to-day role and is made up of time spent during your work hours, equalling a minimum of 6 hours per week (this time varies based on the apprenticeship).
An example of this could be 2 hours in a workshop, a 30-minute session with your coach, 30 minutes listening to a relevant podcast, and 3 hours applying your new skills to a project at work.
OTJ means you’ll have designated time to apply your learnings from the program, revise, and explore resources. Additionally, every minute that you spend in taught sessions with your coach, workshops, and bootcamps contributes to OTJ.
How can your manager support this?
Your manager can help you find the time in your day to work on OTJ tasks. See the conversation guide below for some prompts on what you can discuss with your manager in terms of OTJ support before you apply.
Can you set aside time each week to dedicate toward your apprenticeship - a minimum of around 6 hours per week (program dependent)?
How can your manager support you in protecting this time?
How can you plan for and mitigate unforeseen workloads that may pose a risk to your OTJ time?
It’s fine if you can’t agree on a set plan right now. The main thing is that you have the conversation and that you have the support of your manager to plan your workload while on the apprenticeship.
Finding opportunities to apply your new skills
An apprenticeship is a chance to learn new knowledge, skills, and behaviours and apply them directly to your work. This is what’s called applied learning. To succeed in the apprenticeship, you will need to be able to apply what you are learning back to your role.
How can your manager support this?
It might not always be clear how exactly you can apply the skills you are learning, but your manager can help you find the right opportunities to do so.
Can you and your manager review the modules and anticipate opportunities for you to apply your skills to live projects or tasks?
If there are no appropriate live projects or tasks within your immediate team, could you support other teams instead?
Will you have a certain amount of time allocated per week to work with data (if applying to a data program)?
You may or may not have a clear idea of how you will apply your new skills and that is okay. The important thing is that you have a plan for shaping your work around the learning outcomes.
Attending apprenticeship activities during working hours
You must attend all the mandatory learning sessions (including coaching workshops) associated with your program. If you miss too many sessions, you may need to be withdrawn from the program.
How can your manager support this?
Can you agree that you will be able to prioritize specific learning activities that happen during the working week (e.g. coach meetings, learning workshops)?
Program-specific questions
To apply what you are learning back into your role, you may need access to certain tools or types of data. Depending on which program you’re looking to apply to, the types of projects and data you’ll need access to will vary. To inform the discussion with your manager, you can check the program-specific details below. You can also find links to an overview of each of our programs if you wish to check what is covered during the program.
Data Literacy/Data & Insights for Business Decisions:
What is the minimum amount of data I need to be able to work with to qualify?
Data Access: you’ll ideally have access to 2-3 tables of data/datasets with several columns of data and 100 or more rows.
Hours working with data: you’ll need to work with data for at least 5 hours per week throughout the apprenticeship.
For more information on what our Data Literacy program teaches and to see if it is relevant to your role, please see our program description page here
Data Fellowship:
What is the minimum amount of data I need to be able to work with to qualify?
Data Access: you’ll ideally have access to;
One large database (e.g. 1000+ rows)
Data suitable for statistical analysis (e.g. a sheet with several quantitative/numerical data points)
Data suitable for prediction (using multiple data points to predict a business outcome e.g. sales, productivity)
Data suitable for forecasting (using historical pieces of information to predict future business needs e.g. revenue growth, resource planning).
Hours working with data: you’ll need to work with data for at least 10 hours per week throughout the apprenticeship.
For more information on what our Data Fellowship program teaches and to see if it is relevant to your role, please see our program description page here
Advanced-Data Fellowship:
What is the minimum amount of data I need to be able to work with to qualify?
Data Access: you’ll ideally have access to;
One large database (e.g. 1000+ rows)
Data suitable for statistical analysis (e.g. a sheet with several quantitative/numerical data points)
Data suitable for prediction (using multiple data points to predict a business outcome e.g. sales, productivity)
Data suitable for forecasting (using historical pieces of information to predict future business needs e.g. revenue growth, resource planning).
Hours working with data: you’ll need to work with data for at least 15 hours per week throughout the apprenticeship.
For more information on what our Advanced-Data Fellowship program teaches and to see if it is relevant to your role, please see our program description page here
Business Transformation Fellowship:
What sort of projects or tasks will I need to be able to work on to qualify?
You’ll need to be able to apply the following in your role:
Document business problems to develop recommendations for a digital solution (e.g. technology or software to improve a process)
Analyse existing business processes, workflows, or user journeys to spot opportunities for improvement
Gather requirements and input from technical and non-technical stakeholders to identify opportunities for change
Access business operations or performance data to recommend improvements.
For more information on what our Business Transformation Fellowship program teaches and to see if it is relevant to your role, please see our program description page here.
Frequently Asked Questions
I haven’t spoken to my manager about this program, can I still apply?
Your manager plays a big role in your apprenticeship. They will need to ensure that you are set up for success so you must speak with them before applying. Once you do, they will help you protect your time to apply your learnings to your work, help develop a support plan for your work, and check in on your progress. Please note that your manager will be notified and asked to support your application once you start the application process, so you should talk to them before starting!
How long does my manager have to respond to their support questions?
Once you have entered their details in your application, your manager will have 3 working days to provide input. The questions take 5-10 minutes to complete.
My apprentice manager is out of the office/does not have time to complete the questions before the deadline. Will this affect my application?
Your manager must answer these questions if possible, so we would encourage you to speak to them to see if they can complete them. It should not take them long and will provide us with the necessary details to confidently progress your application. If they are unable to respond, we will take into account your answer to our apprenticeship expectations agreement to progress your application. This will not impact your eligibility for the apprenticeship.