I’m finally half way through my L&D apprenticeship. This is what I’ve learnt so far.
Seemingly years ago, back in September 2023, I enrolled on the Level 5 Learning and Development Consultant/Business Partner apprenticeship, which is accredited by the CIPD. Usually, this is a 2-year programme, which would suggest I should be nearly done by now! Instead, thanks to a break in learning for my maternity leave, I’ve just hit the 50% complete milestone.
Over the past nearly 2 years, this is what I have learnt.
1. You might not find an apprenticeship easy, just because you have a higher level qualification through a traditional learning route.
Prior to starting my apprenticeship (Level 5), I had already successfully completed an undergraduate degree (Level 6) and a PGCE (Level 7). I did my PGCE at Oxford, so am not a stranger to academic challenge. Given my previous academic experience, I was fully expecting to find the apprenticeship easy.
While I have found most of the essay and research based tasks pretty straightforward, the apprenticeship focus is much more on practical and applied learning than theoretical academic work. I’ve found this much more challenging as it’s a completely new way of learning for me!
2. Apprenticeships are flexible!
As I mentioned in the opening paragraph of this post, I have taken much longer to complete this apprenticeship than most people will do, because I took 9 months off work for maternity leave! In traditional qualifications, taking this amount of time away from studying would be a complex process that could end in you needing to re-take parts of your course or having to drop out all together. Apprenticeships have the option to take a ‘break in learning’, which usually can last for up to 12 months. These breaks in learning can be used for maternity leave, as in my case, or for other reasons like long term illness, caring responsibilities or career breaks. The process for taking a break in learning is generally super simple and means you don’t have to worry about life getting in the way of your study.
I’ve also moved employer without having any impact on my apprenticeship. In my case this was moving from one government department to another, so not a completely new organisation. If you were moving from one private company to another, or from government to private sector, this may be a little more tricky. However, it is possible!
This kind of flexibility is one of my favourite aspects of the apprenticeship system, and it is where I think apprenticeships really stand out from other qualification methods.
3. Not everything you learn will be relevant right now.
I currently work in L&D within the civil service, which differs from L&D in private business as we have different ways of managing budgets, different aims and different approaches to strategy.
Much of what I have learnt on the apprenticeship is quite understandably aimed at private business, as this makes up the majority of employers! As a result, I have run into a few tasks that are quite difficult to complete – a task to do with recruitment for example, was particularly difficult as we would recruit in a very specific way using the civil service system, which didn’t meet the criteria of the apprenticeship task. In these situations it’s been really helpful to have a good skills coach, who has been able to help me apply what is relevant, and understand the different approaches and how they could be used elsewhere.
In the moment this might seem like a waste of time, but by engaging in learning that isn’t relevant right now I am setting myself up for future success. I might not spend my entire career in the civil service, so by understanding the role of L&D in the private sector, I am going to be more successful if I ever do make that public – private transition.
4. It’s easier with a community.
With a more niche subject like L&D, it is not unusual to be the only apprentice in your team or even in your wider organisation on your particular course. This can feel a little isolating, especially when you are struggling.
I have found that the workshops and webinars are great for getting to know your cohort and having a chat about some of the things you might be finding hard, but these are only every few weeks. The first cohort I was part of had a WhatsApp group chat, which was helpful but did fizzle out eventually.
On my quest for community, I set up an ‘HR Apprentice Peer Support’ Network in my organisation. We meet once per month to talk about our apprenticeship and to help each other out. We also have a teams channel and know how to contact each other if we need additional peer support. I’m still the only L&D apprentice but connecting with the HR support and People Professional apprentices has been amazing for making me feel more supported!
While it hasn’t always been easy and I’ve taken a bit of a longer route, the L&D apprenticeship has been a really positive experience for me so far and I excited to get on and finish the second half!
If you want to find out more about my apprenticeship journey or have a question about the L&D apprenticeship, subscribe to my email list below or use the contact form to get in touch, I would love to hear from you!
‘But My Kid Has It’ – The Rise of the Fake Neurodiversity Expert in Training Delivery.
Recently I saw a post on LinkedIn where someone who claimed to be able to help neurodiverse children was asserting the idea that people with ADHD have an ‘executive functioning age’ that is 30% lower than their biological age. According to the brightly coloured table they had posted (without a single reference to any research), someone with ADHD and a biological age of 27, would have an ‘executive functioning age’ of 18. This is, of course, absolute nonsense.
I left a comment asking where their evidence for these ‘ages’ came from. Shockingly I never received a response.
People with ADHD do often struggle with executive functioning tasks, but ‘Executive Functioning Age’ is not a real concept. The 30% figure is not evidence based.
The person posting takes money to ‘help’ people with ADHD.
Their qualification to do so? Their child has it.
What’s the problem for L&D?
This is not an isolated incident and this individual is not the only person advertising paid for services relating to neurodiversity without much to back up their qualification to do so.
As we see more visibility for neurodiversity in the workplace there are more L&D teams looking to work with experts to deliver training in this area. There are some really great examples of training available in this area, but there are also some truly terrible ones.
As a person who has been diagnosed with ADHD myself, I am concerned that there are ‘trainers’ or ‘experts’ out there taking advantage of the increased interest in neurodiversity for their own profit. All while producing sub-standard or outright harmful training.
In the example above, telling an employer that their new hire, who has just disclosed their ADHD diagnosis, is going to act like a teenager despite being in their late 20’s, is probably not going to support a positive relationship. It’s also not factually accurate.
Equally I’ve seen suggestions that managers only give their neurodiverse colleagues positive feedback as they may not be able to cope with the negative. This doesn’t help anyone. Neurodiverse people are often more sensitive to negative feedback and we can take a little longer to process it, but we still need to know where we are going wrong in order to improve.
A real expert, who understands the nuances of neurodiversity and the psychology behind it, is not going to suggest either of these approaches.
Is there not a place for lived experience in L&D?
There absolutely is!
Lived experience can be interesting, insightful and help to promote further awareness of neurodiversity. People who have these experiences are an integral part of the conversation around neurodiversity and I am in no way suggesting that these voices are excluded. However, I think it is important to understand where they are most relevant.
I love to see sessions on topics like ‘My Experience of ADHD’, ‘My Experience as a Parent of an ADHD Child’ etc. This is something I really encourage, and think is hugely important.
What I believe is crucial is that these types of sessions are very clearly one person speaking about their own personal experience. Not speaking for everyone with ADHD or Neurodiverse people as a whole.
I can tell you all about my experience with my ADHD diagnosis and I am always keen to do so. What I can’t do is profess to understand the complex psychology behind neurodiversity, because I am not a psychologist. I don’t have the education or training that makes me an expert on these topics.
I am an expert on me, but I’m not an expert on ADHD.
I can remember that and I think others would benefit from remembering it too.
What can L&D teams to do avoid working with the wrong person?
If you are concerned about getting the right speaker or training facilitator to deliver your neurodiversity training, think about some of the following questions:
Do they have any qualifications or education that would give them the knowledge needed to deliver Neurodiversity Training?
If they do not have the education or training, do they have lived experience?
If they are providing training based on lived experience, is the training planned specifically about their personal experience?
Where they are giving statistics or facts, can they easily back these up with research?
Are they open to discussing their ideas and sharing their evidence with you?
Learning is More Than Listening: How to Get Participants Applying Learning.
Learning in itself is a wonderful thing, but it’s even better when it leads to us actually being able to do something. Especially in a workplace setting where being able to ‘do’ things better is likely the reason for the learning in the first place.
However, I have so often been in training where no actual doing happens. Where participants are sat listening and asking questions and there is a lovely slide pack with some well designed slides for the facilitator to talk through. Maybe participants get to have a group discussion about the topics or there is a quiz to see how many facts they can remember. It all seems fine but it’s not necessarily preparing those participants to apply the learning once they leave the classroom.
In the best training, participants are able to practice applying the learning to real (or real-ish) life scenarios. This helps them to see how the knowledge works in practice and work through some of the possible problems they may have in a safe an supporting environment.
This isn’t always easy to do, especially if you are delivering a one-off session or aren’t very familiar with the work of your participants in advance.
Some of my favourite examples of practical learning application for within a single training session are:
Past examples of real work
This is one of the approaches that often won’t be applicable, but when it work is can be a really impactful training tool. I’ve been lucky enough recently to have been able to sit in on some legal training sessions where this has been used very effectively. Everyone in the training session was internal and so there were no security issues in these cases, but security is something to consider when using real life examples.
In the legal training sessions, previous cases, which had been anonymised, were used for participants to apply the content they had just learnt. They were given the cases along with the relevant law and asked to work in small groups to come up with what they would do had they been the solicitor working on this case.
The benefit of using real examples is that they could then compare their answers with the real legal outcomes, which led to some very interesting discussions around why decisions had been made.
Bring a problem
Another approach to applying learning in a training session can be to get participants to ‘bring a problem’ to the session (and hopefully leave with a solution). This can be a tricky one because it relies on participants doing work in advance and showing up prepared, which we know isn’t always going to happen. People are busy and training session pre-work is an easy thing to forget. For this reason, I always like to have a couple of fictional but relevant problems for participants to ‘borrow’ if needed.
Bringing a problem can work really well for sessions on personal development type topics, where participants could come prepared with something they would like to work on and can be supported to find a solution to their problem through the session. This would involve working with the facilitator, in pairs or small groups to talk through issues and identify where the learning can be applied to solve a problem.
Where this approach can be difficult is with topics like communication or management, where the problems faced by participants may be sensitive or confidential. In these scenarios it might not be appropriate to share with a group, especially if the participants all work in the same team or organisation.
Fictional people with fictional problems.
This works much like the approach above but with two main advantages:
- You aren’t relying on participants to remember to do any pre-training work
- There are no confidentiality issues
What you need to do is create a series of fictional characters who have a problem which can be solved by the proper application of the approaches you have just taught. These examples can then be assigned to groups with some attached questions, they can come up with the solutions together before sharing. The great thing about this type of activity is that you can purposefully create example which will steer participants towards your desired learning outcomes.
There are so many other ways of applying learning in a training session – role play being a classic (although sometimes unpopular) example. The important thing is that you are think about how your participants are going to actively practice the skills you are giving them, instead of just listening to you talk!
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