Our specialist teams can support your organisation to identify skills needs and match you with apprenticeship cohorts and providers.
NSAR’s Skills Match supports employers to fill skills gaps and shortages through apprenticeships.
With Skills Match, NSAR plays a more active role in supporting employers to address skills gaps in their workforce by increasing the utilisation of apprenticeships.
Skills Match aims to remove barriers to apprentice recruitment by helping employers identify their apprenticeship needs, create cohorts of individuals and match them with the right training and education providers.
You can pick-and-chose from these services as required. Skills Match works alongside our Apprenticeship Support services that help with apprenticeship development and assessment and levy optimisation.
Skills Match provides a cost-effective way of bringing in new talent to your businesses and upskilling existing talent, as cohort sourcing and provider matching services can be funded from your apprenticeship levy.
Discover more about the service in our brochures:
What support does Skills Match offer?
Working with your organisation to identify skills shortages and gaps in your workforce.
Identifying apprenticeships that will address these shortages and gaps – either new apprentices or upskilling of existing staff.
Matching your organisation with the right apprenticeship training providers for your workforce needs.
Providing procurement support or procuring viable apprenticeship cohorts on behalf of your organisation.
"This is a service that will help businesses employ apprentices...something that in many cases they want to do but haven’t been able to do before. The effect will be that they will have a better story for their clients, they will be able to refresh their workforce and give local people a chance."
Why is this service important to the industry?
The ambition of this service is for the industry to act collectively and collaboratively to address skills and productivity gaps by doubling current levels of apprenticeships to reach at least 5,000 per year.
The rail industry is facing significant skills gaps and staff shortages caused by an increase in government investment, an ageing workforce, an increased need for digital skills – and low apprenticeship recruitment and utilisation compared to other industries. We need to inspire and attract a new generation of talent to a career in rail, as well as upskill and reskill the current workforce.
Benefits of Skills Match
For rail employers:
We help you understand current skills shortages and gaps in your workforce.
We help you identify what apprentices are needed to address these shortages and gaps.
We help you upskill existing staff through apprenticeship programmes.
We help source new apprentices for your business, where needed.
We match your business with the right training providers for your workforce needs.
A cost-effective way of bringing in new talent to your businesses and upskilling existing talent, as cohort sourcing and provider matching services can be funded from your apprenticeship levy.
For training providers:
We source cohorts from employers for relevant training programmes, saving you time and money and increasing student numbers.
Added capacity to existing apprenticeship cohorts makes your courses more viable.
Maximise assessor utilisation by helping to maintain a full caseload.
NSAR is a rail industry skills expert who can provide you with specialist advice on how to engage with rail employers – helping you further your employer engagement and portfolio of employers as customers.
Opportunities to add new apprenticeships to your provision in rail and rail-related industries.
For the industry:
Current apprenticeship demand is identified and matched with providers to meet the supply.
Training providers can focus their course curricula to relevant rail industry needs, making courses more relevant to the industry requirements of the future.
Improves skills gaps and shortages across the industry.
New talent pipeline into the industry.
Upskilling of existing employees in the rail sector.