Taking On an Apprentice

What you're actually signing up for

An apprenticeship is a formal arrangement, not just a junior employee with a lower rate. It runs on a training contract registered with your state or territory training authority, and it binds you as much as it binds them. The nominal term for most licensed trades runs to around four years, and while completion is competency-based — a good apprentice who progresses can finish earlier — you should plan on the full term rather than the best case.

Three parties sit inside it, and knowing who does what saves a lot of confusion in the first month:

• You — the employer. You provide the paid work, the supervision, the range of work they need to be assessed against, and the release for their off-the-job training.
• The RTO — the registered training organisation, usually a TAFE or a private provider, delivering the formal qualification and doing the assessing.
• The training authority and your AASN provider — the state or territory authority registers and administers the training contract, and an Australian Apprenticeship Support Network provider handles the sign-up and the administration around it.

Your obligations as the employer

These are the ones that catch people out — not because they're unreasonable, but because a busy owner treats an apprentice as an extra set of hands and only reads the contract when something goes wrong.

What it really costs you

The wage is the smallest part of this decision, and the full cost stack behind any employee is worked through in our guide on what your first employee actually costs. What's specific to an apprentice is the shape of the return over the term — you're paying for four years to get roughly two of them back.

• Your supervision hours are the real bill. Every hour you spend teaching, checking and redoing is an hour off your own charge-out rate. In the first year this is significant and almost nobody budgets for it.
• They bill at a lower rate, and less of their time is chargeable. Trade school weeks, travel, clean-up and the jobs they're not ready for all come out of the billable side.
• The learning curve costs twice. Work done slowly, work done twice, and the material wasted while they learn are all real.
• Kitting them out. Tools, PPE, uniform, a phone, and the training costs and fees that fall to you.
• Year three and four are where it turns. By then a decent apprentice is running straightforward jobs and genuinely making you money. The business case lives there, not in year one.

That shape has a practical consequence: an apprentice is a bet on having steady work for years, not on being busy this quarter. If your work is lumpy or your cash position is thin, a first-year on the books through a slow winter is a serious strain.

The support that exists for employers

Governments have a long-standing interest in getting more apprentices through, and there is usually employer-side support available. What's on offer changes with each federal budget and by state, so treat this as a list of categories to ask about rather than a list of entitlements:

• Federal employer incentives for taking on and retaining an apprentice, administered through the Australian Apprenticeships Incentive System and delivered via your AASN provider. Eligibility often depends on the occupation being on a priority list.
• Higher support for priority occupations, which is where most licensed trades tend to sit — but check, because the lists get revised.
• State and territory programs — these run separately from the federal ones and vary a lot. Your state training authority is the place to ask.
• Payroll tax treatment. Some states and territories offer exemptions or rebates on apprentice and trainee wages. It only matters if you're above your state's payroll tax threshold, but if you are, it isn't small. Check with your state revenue office.
• Group training organisations (GTOs) — a different model rather than an incentive. The GTO employs the apprentice and hosts them out to you, so they carry the employment obligations and you pay an hourly charge. More expensive per hour, far less commitment, and a sensible way to try it if you're not certain you can carry four years.

Picking the right one

You're choosing someone to spend four years with, and the trade skill is the part you're contracting to supply. So don't select on it. What actually matters:

• They turn up. Reliability is the whole job at first-year level, and it's the thing references will tell you honestly if you ask directly.
• They can get to site. Licence, transport, and a realistic commute. This ends more apprenticeships than aptitude does.
• They ask questions rather than guessing. The apprentice who guesses on a live job is a safety problem, not a training problem.
• They can take a correction without sulking for the rest of the day.
• They want this trade, not just a job. Ask what made them pick it and listen to whether the answer is theirs.

Advertise honestly — early starts, the travel, the trade school commitment, what you supply and what they bring. Every unpleasant fact you leave out of the ad is one you'll deal with in month three. And be careful about hiring in a spike: an apprentice signed up because you were flat out in November is still on the books in the quiet July.

Making the four years work

1. Decide who's actually teaching them. Name the person. If it's you, protect the time. If it's your leading hand, tell them it's part of their job and check they want it — an unwilling mentor is worse than none.
2. Plan the breadth deliberately. Look at the qualification's range of work at the start of each year and make sure your job mix will cover it. If your work genuinely can't, arrange exposure elsewhere rather than discovering the gap in year four.
3. Keep the paperwork current. Sign the logbook and the training plan as competencies are achieved, not in a panic before a review. Late sign-off holds up their progression and their rate.
4. Give them their own work early. Small, low-risk jobs they run start to finish, appropriate to their stage and supervision level. It's the fastest way to find out what they can do alone — and the fastest way to build someone who thinks.
5. Talk to the RTO. The training provider will tell you where they're struggling before you'd have noticed it on site. Most employers never make the call.
6. Review properly, twice a year. Twenty minutes, written down, both directions. It's where a drifting apprenticeship gets caught while it's still fixable.

Frequently asked questions