As one of the world’s longest running general insurers, RSA are providing peace of mind to individuals and protecting small businesses and large organisations from uncertainty.
They’ve been working with ACCA to provide more apprenticeships to future talent, and here’s why they chose ACCA Apprenticeships over their competitors.
We had never offered apprenticeships prior to the levy implementation, so when that came into play, we decided it was time. We often bring in contractors to help fill resourcing gaps, but we wanted to find a more sustainable and long-term solution to bringing in fresh and new talent to our business. If you continue to do the same thing over and over, you’ll get the same results, so we knew a change was essential. It also meant we could help early and emerging talent see the potential in accountancy, and a career in financial services, we have been able to grow and develop them resulting in their loyalty, so why wouldn’t we?
We started small, with our first cohort being 16 college leavers, who soon enough flourished and created a big impact in our offices. Fast forward to the here and now where we have over 300 apprentices, across all our different business functions. When our first cohort arrived, we noticed a huge shift in our office’s motivation as they were watching these apprentices strive to be their best, and complete qualifications quickly, our teams were motivated to stand up and work smarter, and some even start apprenticeships themselves.
We have seen a huge shift across the organisation in their perceptions, from what they used to know apprenticeships as. In the past, many of our people viewed them as labour-based programmes for 16-24-year olds looking to start in trades such as plumbing and carpentry. Many perceived these young people weren’t ready for university level programmes and potentially didn’t have the academic abilities to pursue them. But that’s all changed. After seeing how hard our apprentices work, the ideas and innovation they bring to our business coupled with their professionalism and desire to excel we believe that apprenticeships absolutely have a place in professional services.
We have spent a lot of time building and developing our apprenticeships provision, knowing there are a lot of financial incentives from the government for businesses that recruit apprentices also helped fund our plans to recruit more. But ultimately, we firmly believe that growing your own talent from the bottom up builds a stronger and diverse workforce, whilst future proofing your organisations for generations to come. We chose to go with ACCA as a training partner due to the support and accolades plus the in-depth training they provide. Any challenges we’ve faced have been promptly addressed as they’ve been at the other end of the phone ready and waiting to help.