Retired skilled workers are being encouraged to put their knowledge and experience to good use by becoming apprentice assessors.
The recruitment of retired and unemployed workers is aimed at avoiding current workers having to down tools to assess and therefore would prevent the loss of workers from the workforce in order to bring in new workers.

Apprenticeship assessors would be linked with a college in their region where they can carry out assessments of new apprentices.

The apprenticeship assessor event is being held at Leyton Orient football club on Thursday, February 28.

This is one of nine different regional events taking place across the UK to coincide with Apprenticeships Week, and is being run by ConstructionSkills, the sector skills council for the construction industry.

February 25 is the first day of the first annual Apprenticeship Week, (which ends on February 29,). It was launched to raise awareness of the benefits that apprenticeships bring to the UK economy.

There are 240,000 apprentices working in more than 130,000 UK organisations.

According to a phone poll of 204 individuals responsible for apprenticeship recruitment in their firms (conducted between January 7-February 6), 80% of respondees said apprenticeships improve staff turnover and retention.

A total of 59% believe training apprentices is more cost effective than hiring skilled staff. Two-thirds of respondents claim that they would struggle to find trained staff with the skills they need without their apprenticeship programmes which help them fill vacancies more quickly. Nearly 60% believe apprenticeships lead to lower overall training costs.

As much as 77% believe apprenticeships make them more competitive and 76% improve productivity.

While 88% believe apprenticeships lead to a more motivated workforce and a total of 57% report a high proportion of their apprentices going on to management positions within the company.

To find out more about apprenticeships, call the apprenticeships employer helpline on 08000 150 400.