Lonnie Emard,
National Apprenticeship Director,
Apprenticely

THIS YEAR, THE week of November 17-23 is National Apprenticeship Week, and so it seemed appropriate to try to pin down the whirlwind we know as Lonnie Emard, our National Apprenticeship Director, and get his take on Registered Apprenticeships today. What follows is a sampling of a much longer conversation.

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I’m thinking of this National Apprenticeship Week interview as Apprenticely’s “state of apprenticeships” address. So, big picture, what is the state of apprenticeships?

I’d have to say that all of our hopes and dreams have really come to fruition. I’ve been involved with apprenticeships since before 2010, while I was at Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, and seeing the evolution of the expansion of apprenticeship today, it really is in full momentum. Because now apprenticeships have become a bipartisan approach to workforce development across the country.

How have apprenticeships become a widely accepted strategy? Every company knows how to go to campus and recruit in that way. They know how to post a job on Indeed or LinkedIn and hope for the best—maybe steal somebody from somebody else, which has never been a way to increase overall capacity. And then there have been a lot of alternative ways of doing workforce through contract staffing, outsourcing, and so on.

Those all worked, but companies are realizing that there has to be a way to grow their own talent. And we at Apprenticely and others around the country are starting to see that the companies that have learned how to do that have gained an advantage. That’s becoming prevalent not just in IT, which has been our focus for our first four years, but also in these other industry sectors that we’ve now expanded into.

Every company has career development, succession planning. They try to think about how to create opportunities for their employees from within, but there wasn’t a proven methodology as to how to go about that. And we’ve talked a lot about how this apprenticeship strategy can serve not only for new hires, but for the ability to advance existing personnel knowing they don’t have all the new skills.

But this is a way to promote them from within and then backfill, and work your way all the way down to where it does create those openings and opportunities for entry-level folks to come in.

And I think we’ve turned the corner on the idea that not every job requires a four-year degree. That was the longstanding issue about apprenticeship—was it working against the idea of somebody going to college to get a four-year degree? Well, the mentality that we’ve been able to not only suggest, but demonstrate, is one where a high school candidate needs to really be pretty sure that they have a direction. And if they do and that includes the degree, then they should go do that.

But if they’re unsure and they’re only going to college to spend the next four years thinking that’s their ticket to get a good job without really any purpose or direction…well, we’re seeing that this country needs folks that become skilled in something, and with apprenticeships they can do that without that degree. And that’s more pervasive than I think anybody ever thought.

Yes—it does seem that people are getting that message and taking it to heart. I mean employers and talent.

The evidence of that is reflected in Apprenticely’s annual report from earlier this year. From 2020 to 2023, it shows the ever-increasing number of IT apprentices, the ever-increasing number of employers. We always anticipated that we would eventually move beyond the small, medium, or even a large company that kind of puts its toe in the water and does one or two apprentices at a time. And now we’ve reached the large company environment, with a select few now doing between 100 and 600 apprentices.

But here’s the real impactful thing to look at when we show our numbers at the end of this year. That same trajectory that we’ve seen in IT? We already have evidence that it’s going to be the same trajectory for manufacturing, the same trajectory for healthcare, the same trajectory for energy. Maybe the numbers may vary a little bit, but based on my experience I believe those same patterns are going to happen in all those additional sectors.

And it’s going to be stackable. You’re going to take our IT year five and stack it on top of that year one of healthcare, year one of manufacturing, year one of energy. And then guess what? In year two they’re going to see the same growth that we saw in IT, but we’re in year six and we’re going to be adding 500 or 600 apprentices a year, and these other sectors are going to be at that 150 range or whatever.

Think about what that looks like as a state. Eight years ago—three years before ACDS/Apprenticely began our first apprenticehip cohort—total active apprentices in all sectors in Arkansas stood at around 3,700. Now we have finally crossed over the 10,000 mark. That’s also a tribute to the work at the Office of Skills Development, led by Stephanie Isaacs and Mark McManus, the Apprenticeship Expansion Coordinator.

That milestone was a big deal to our new Office of Apprenticeship director for the state, John Kuznar, and our contribution to that increase is evidence that the more we can repeat what is a proven model here in Arkansas, the better we’ll do. Now this end-to-end model we’ve created is something that others in other states are striving to figure out how to do. And in some ways, with the leadership of some of our national companies, we’re going to see Apprenticely’s impact begin to cross borders.

Apprenticely’s 2024 move into sectors besides IT in Arkansas was a big change. Can you take those sectors individually and just talk about each one?

Sure. They’re all different in their own way. Healthcare is certainly unique, right? They have traditionally had an ample supply of candidates that come through high school programs that are being prepared to go into the various roles in healthcare. Not just nursing, but a lot of other roles. And we’ve tried not to enter into that process because what they’re waiting on in terms of somebody coming out with residency, doing a nursing program, there’s still a huge demand. I think a lot of the supply had come from within, so they were using an apprenticeship model and not even calling it that, right? Mentors were called preceptors. Residency was really an internship, and then a formal apprenticeship was actually them taking their clinicals and going to work full time, getting paid full salary.

Now we’ve complemented that. Just think about some of those entry positions, whether that’s a community healthcare worker or a patient care tech, a medical assistant, phlebotomist, I could go down the list. Those areas are great for growing your own talent from people who didn’t go to school, didn’t have any background, and could use an apprenticeship to just get started. And that’s where we’ve focused.

Manufacturing, entirely different. Other than for engineers coming in to design things or thinking about this movement from more of an old type manufacturing environment to advanced manufacturing with robotics and more technology woven in, what we’ve found there is that a lot of operators, a lot of assemblers, packagers, things that had always been typically only manual labor are even now still requiring some technology advancement. Their skills are different. And that really was not intended to be a bunch of four-year-degree folks. That’s always been a population of folks that had come out of a trade school or maybe had been working somewhere else and would like to make a little more money.

So those kinds of manufacturing jobs have become very key in terms of the use of an apprenticeship program, because they have to know certain things to have confidence to start. But there’s a whole lot to be learned and technology has become a major part of that. So, skill building has become prevalent, and I think companies are seeing that these apprenticeship programs can produce skilled and productive workers quickly.

Energy. What makes energy different is that a lot of the roles initially were in advanced energy, renewable energy, emerging sector kind of work. But what’s become clear is that even the traditional companies have a role to play here, whether that’s involving the traditional power grid, or the new energy opportunities. We’re talking about lithium for electric vehicles and batteries, and we’re talking about what’s happening with water operations and infrastructure, because a lot of these systems are really becoming worn and obsolete.

It’s in the Energy category where we’ve had to use apprenticeship, because nobody’s getting trained already. It’s not like there were programs out there. They’re all new, it’s all technology. So, it’s kind of a combination of vendors and folks that are on the leading edge having to become the RTI providers for apprenticeship training. So that makes this sector a little more unique as well. And some of the apprenticeship standards don’t exist yet, so we’re in the midst of creating them.

And it does take an intermediary to be involved in that sort of activity because otherwise, any one employer feels like that burden is all on them—to figure that out, to gain the direction, to pay for everything. And I don’t think any employer should have to do that. I think there’s enough industry focus about what’s needed that those can be determined and then we can become the vehicle, if you will.

I’m also curious about Apprenticely’s expansion to other states that we announced in April. Can you give us an update on that?

Well, there are probably 5 to 10 companies now that have lined up to say, “How do we take our next step in this?” They’re still trying to figure out how to take our model that worked here in Arkansas and replicate it.

I think we’ve got the resource side figured out. Although big companies, small companies, medium-sized, if they’re national, they still need to figure out how to communicate from within. They own their apprenticeships and the employee data, and we need to partner to source that data even as the intermediary and as their sponsor for Registered Apprenticeships. So, companies have to manage that part of a scaled apprenticeship program. It’s a little easier when you’re going to their location down the street or 50 miles down the road. But when you’re talking about across the country and knowing who is going to be the point of contact, Apprenticely and some national partners are refining that process.

One of those partners, Safal Partners, has some inroads in every state, because that’s what they were set up to do with the Department of Labor long before us. And that partnership allows them to point us in the direction of where additional state funds might support apprenticeship as we employers determine the demand in the other states. This work is underway and we’ll see great strides in 2025.