The Institute of Student Employers has released its Student Development Survey 2019. Chief Research Officer, Tristram Hooley shares seven key stats that should make you rethink what you are doing in your development programme.

1. Firms are only spending an average of 33% of their apprenticeship levy. This means that most firms are wasting more of this money than they are using. You need to get a clear plan in place to ensure that you are using the levy money effectively.
2. 66% of firms are either using the apprenticeship levy for their graduate development programmes or thinking about doing this. It can be easy to put apprentices and graduates into different mental boxes or departments in your organisation. However, this year’s survey shows that most organisations are moving past this and are increasingly viewing the apprenticeship levy as part of the solution to the development of their graduates. If you aren’t doing this, but are underspending your levy, you should devote some time to investigating how other organisations are approaching this.
3. 88% of firms run a two year or longer graduate development programme. Shorter programmes are associated with poorer retention. If you run a shorter programme it might be time to look at whether this still makes sense.
4. More than half of employers have problems with graduate resilience, managing up, leadership, commercial awareness, ability to deal with conflict, self-awareness, career management and job-specific technical skills. Hardly anyone is worried about some of the traditional areas that training focuses on like IT skills, teamwork, problem solving and presentation skills. Is your training and development programme focused on the right things?
5. 90% of employers offer graduates online learning, but only 24% say that it is one of the most effective approaches to development. Are you using the right development approaches or just the ones that you have always used/are most fashionable/cheapest? Is it time to rethink how you develop student hires?
6. 40% of graduate hires are leaving within five years of being hired. What are you doing to address graduate retention? Is it time for you to overhaul your retention strategy?
7. 5% of entry-level staff leave to change careers, 42% because they have been poached by another company and 33% because they are dissatisfied with progression. Career related reasons are at the heart of issues with retention. Is there any way you can improve the career and progression prospects of your staff? If you can this will be likely to increase their motivation and likelihood of staying.

ISE Student Development Survey 2019 is available to download.