Go Live Data Launches Readiness Score to Help Colleges Convert Employer Interest Into Apprenticeships, as Government Expands Support

New programme enables employers to assess their apprenticeship readiness within two minutes, helping colleges focus on businesses most likely to recruit while supporting SMEs to benefit from new Government incentives.

Go Live Data has launched The Readiness Score for Education, a twelve-month programme that lets local employers assess their own readiness to take on an apprentice, then connects the ones who are ready to their local college, university or training provider, and gives everyone else clear advice on what to put in place first.

Local Business Outreach Programme

The product comes directly out of the Manchester company’s work running the Local Business Outreach Programme (LBOP) for institutions across the country. Those campaigns generate a high volume of employer enquiries. But when the enquiries reached employer engagement teams, the same pattern kept appearing: plenty of interest, and very little certainty.

Employers liked the idea of an apprentice. What they could not say was whether they had the paid hours, the mentor, the off-the-job release, the apprenticeship service account or the paperwork in place. And the only way to find out was to book a meeting with the college first.

Interest was never the problem

“We have spent years proving that employers are interested,” said Adam Herbert, co-founder and CEO of Go Live Data. “The LBOP does that job. What it also showed us is that interest on its own does not become an apprenticeship start. A small employer with no HR team is not going to book a meeting just to discover whether they qualify for something. That is a big ask, and it is where a lot of genuine interest quietly disappears.

“What those employers needed was a way to assess themselves. That is the whole product. Ten questions, two minutes, in their own time, no login and no sales call. If they are ready, they meet a specialist. If they are not, they get told exactly what to sort out, and they are invited back when they have done it.”

How it works

The Readiness Score is built and branded in the institution’s own name and hosted by Go Live Data, so nothing lands on college IT teams. Questions and scoring are drawn from the provider’s own apprenticeship working agreement during an onboarding audit, so the advice an employer receives is the advice that provider would have given.

● Four questions on fit and six on readiness, one per screen, each written to teach as it asks.
● A score out of 100 with a clear band, plus funding guidance matched to the employer’s size.
● Employers who score highly are invited to speak to a specialist, and the lead reaches the employer
team in real time with every answer attached.
● Employers who are not yet ready receive a short, practical list of what to put in place, and an
invitation to re-score in a few months.

Readiness is weighted three times more heavily than intent, so an enthusiastic employer who cannot meet the commitments is helped rather than chased, and a quiet one who can is surfaced immediately.

Aimed at the capacity problem in FE

The programme is designed around a reality most providers recognise: employer engagement teams are small, targets are not, and consultant time is the scarcest resource in the building. Colleges routinely run two or three consultants against apprenticeship targets in the hundreds.

“If a team of two spends its week establishing basics an employer could have answered in two minutes, that is the year gone,” said Herbert. “This is not about filtering employers out. It is about making sure the first conversation starts at ‘when shall we come out to you?’ rather than ‘tell me about your business’, and about giving the other employers something genuinely useful instead of silence.”

Availability

The Readiness Score for Education is available now to colleges, universities and independent training providers as a fully managed twelve-month programme, including the audience build, twelve creative sends a year produced by Go Create, hosting, real-time lead delivery, monthly reporting and a dedicated customer success manager.

Providers can have a draft of their own Readiness Score built from their working agreement before committing, so they can click through it with their team.