ANS shares rewards of investing in young talent

Finding talent is a perennial problem across the channel, but some have chosen to take proactive steps to open their doors to invite in a fresh wave. A great example of encouraging apprenticeship and second career opportunities can be seen in the work being done by ANS, both internally and with partners, to bring young adults into a channel career.

Earlier this year, ANS relieved a “strong standard” rating from Ofsted for its ANS Academy, with inspectors praising its Academy-as-a-Service offering.

Toria Walters, chief people office at ANS, is part of the team leading the firm’s apprenticeship efforts. He outlined the progress that has been made and the reasons why more businesses across the channel should reach out and support the next generation.

She said the motivation for the company to start its apprenticeship scheme back in 2013 had been to help generate its own talent pipeline, as well as to provide options for youngsters living in the community that would be attracted to the opportunity to develop skills in a tech business.

“Tech is a very hard industry to recruit from. Everyone’s looking for the best talent, so growing our own was where it started,” she said.

There was also the practical need to get something back from the Apprenticeship Levy but once started it became clear there were corporate social responsibility benefits. “It’s really the right thing to do,” added Walters. “We utilise ANS Academy to bring in different, diverse people from underprivileged areas in the Manchester area.”

The candidates that often end up at the ANS Academy are not out there in the market and help to improve diversity and bring in fresh perspectives. Walters detailed the process, which starts with outreach to local schools and visits by ANS into underprivileged areas to explain how the scheme works and the benefits of getting involved.

“We’ll start usually around 13 years old, and then try to keep that connection going, so that when it comes to them being 16/17, they know who we are. It’s not as scary and daunting. And we do things like hackathons and boot camps, where we bring them in with their schools to come in and see it,” she said. “With them coming in and going, [they start to think] ‘Oh, I could work somewhere like that, and I don’t need to go to uni’.”

Over the years, ANS Academy has become well known across Manchester and the North West as a place where students are looked after and great efforts will be made to find them a place at the end of their course.

“They get looked after extremely well, and we will always find a place – [if] it’s not with us at the end of it, [then we have] our network in the Northwestern tech talent charter. We will reach out to a lot of organisations, and we’ll always find them a job,” said Walters.

ANS does not demand technology experience but instead seeks the right attitude from those who want to join the academy , ensuring that those who sign up get through to completion.

“We’ve learned what are you looking for when you’re recruiting these apprentices. It has to be real, with will and determination to want to do it,” said Walters. “We’re very protective, and we were quite thorough with the recruiting process. To have a 100% pass rate, which is what we’ve had throughout the whole academy, speaks for itself.”

The ANS experience underlines the importance of getting buy-in across the business, because department managers must often work with apprentices and make sure they are gaining knowledge.

“ANS Academy is the jewel in our crown. We’re very proud of it, and I think that’s probably the hardest battle for any company ... trying to get the appreciation of managers who are extremely busy and have a job to do, so sitting next to somebody with no experience who you [are training] is hard,” said Walters.

“We’ve set our teams up so they feed into ... junior work that they can do from day one, but the managers are the best managers we’ve got to manage those apprentices. They want to do it. They get out of bed in the morning to bring on a nurtured junior talent.”

Walters said that as ANS Academy generated more success stories, the benefits of engaging with young people was clear: “We are quite excited about seeing people come through, because I think once you’ve gone through it, and you can see what it’s given back and the talent that comes out the other side, and you see the actual reward from the effort that goes in, then you get the buy in.”

ANS is keen to encourage others to follow its example and proactively work to reduce the channel skills gap, with the door open for those who want to tap into ANS’ 13 years of experience.

“My message would be that the effort is worth it, because the reward is two-fold: it helps so many business problems with finding really good talent that you can nurture into your culture, your ways of working quite early on; and then the reward from seeing somebody go through that journey and be a brilliant employee,” said Walters.

“[There is significant] loyalty from our apprentices who’ve gone through the programme and are employed by us. We’ve got probably about 80% of our apprentices still with us throughout because they’re very appreciative of what we’ve done.”

Walters added that as well as easing talent recruitment challenges, it was positive to give back to the local community and provide youth growing up there with an opportunity to change their futures.

“It’s also about seeing somebody who should be a senior manager in a technology business but would never have had that opportunity if they hadn’t come through this route. There’s not a bad thing about [ANS Academy],” she said.

Since the ANS Academy apprenticeship scheme started 13 years ago, ANS has welcomed in 247 apprentices who have started their tech careers.