Webinar on Demand: The Missing First Step: Pre-employment Before Apprenticeships - Sponsored by PeoplePlus (FREE to attend)
How providers can collaborate with national employers to help create better pathways into work.
Overview
Apprenticeships are one route into entry-level roles, and policy is backing them. But what happens if someone isn't at that standard yet?
For a lot of people, they aren't. The Milburn review's interim report, published in May 2026, put the number of 16 to 24 year olds not in education, employment or training at close to a million, with more than six in ten never having had a job and around 40% already holding qualifications at A level or above. Readiness and attainment are different things, and for a large share of the people policy is aiming at, an entry-level apprenticeship is the second step, not the first.
The step before it is not hard to describe. It is hard to run at scale. An employer hiring across dozens of sites meets a different provider in every region, with different quality, paperwork and cohort timings, which is why many default to agency hiring instead. Milburn's diagnosis is the same: institutions operating in parallel, commissioned in isolation, with referral routes that never join up.
This session covers what a pre-employment stage needs to cover, what it really takes to run one, and how providers and employers can coordinate their activity so they can serve large and multi-region employers together rather than one area at a time.
A short film follows Liam from referral to a job with Tesco. PeoplePlus coordinates the Social Recruitment Framework, which gives employers a single point of contact across their sites and gives providers access to that demand.
What You Will Learn:
By the end of this session, you’ll be able to:
- Quote the current data on entry-level readiness from the Milburn review and ONS, including NEET numbers, the split between inactivity and unemployment, health-related inactivity and the fall in apprenticeship starts for young people, and use it to make the case internally.
- Explain why an entry-level apprenticeship is a second step rather than a first step for a large share of the people policy is aiming at, and use Milburn's demand-side argument that better-prepared young people arriving at a labour market with fewer entry routes will still be left outside.
- Have a more useful conversation with employers about entry-level recruitment criteria , and know how to reach employers who have already committed to fair-chance hiring through the Social Recruitment Covenant.
- Identify the funding and partnership routes available to pay for pre-employment provision alongside apprenticeship delivery, and understand why so little of the current £8.1 billion spent on benefits for 16 to 24 year olds reaches participation support.
The Missing First Step: Pre-employment Before Apprenticeships - Sponsored by PeoplePlus (FREE to attend)
Webinar on demand
