Members of Parliament are backing the Recruitment and Employment’s proposals to make the Apprenticeship Levy more flexible.

The announcement comes as the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Women and Work, along with the REC, launch a toolkit, “How to Recruit Women for the 21st Century”. The toolkit takes up the REC’s recommendation to broaden the apprenticeship levy to be used as a training and skills levy. 

According to the REC, making the levy more flexible will allow many thousands more temporary workers to benefit from training. To improve fairness in recruiting and selecting candidates allowing women more opportunities in the jobs market, the APPG has also recommended the importance of using recruitment agencies affiliated with trade associations like the REC.

Sophie Wingfield, Head of Policy at the REC, commented, “The APPG adopting our recommendation to broaden the apprenticeship levy into a training and skills levy that can be used to train temporary workers is a good step forward to allowing women to progress their chosen careers. A flexible levy would also help more women to access jobs in key sectors that are finding it difficult to find the staff that they need.”

“We are pleased to have worked with the APPG in creating this toolkit for employers,” Wingfield said. “Diversity in the workplace has been proven to lead to better performance for organisations and reducing the pay gap would generate real benefits for the UK economy. Despite this, often unwittingly, organisations are reducing the likelihood of women getting jobs because of outdated recruitment processes.”

“To ensure a step-change in diversity, employers need to take action to mitigate against bias. Key to this is reviewing hiring procedures and updating each stage of the recruitment process. Amending job adverts to avoiding gendered language, and ensuring you’ve considered flexible working from the outset are just two examples that can help employers increase the number of women at application stage,” Wingfield added.

Jess Phillips MP, Co-Chair of the Women and Work APPG, also commented, “If employers are to successfully hire and attract the best, diverse talent, they need to take recruitment seriously and review their processes. This toolkit encourages employers and policy-makers to make those changes, giving practical steps that will go some way in shifting persistent obstacles that women face when entering and re-entering the labour market.”

Gillian Keegan MP, Co-Chair of the Women and Work APPG, said, “I’m really pleased that the Women and Work APPG examined recruitment during 2018 to highlight ways to overcome the particular barriers faced by women. We have published this call for action to employers, to encourage them to think differently about how, where and who they hire, as part of open and inclusive recruitment process. We’ve also called on government to support employers to do this.”