1. Visit Preston
  2. Preston Markets
Open site navigation menu

Make a Lancashire Skills Pledge

28 June 2023

Benefit your business by investing in skills and training

Lancashire Skills Pledge enables businesses across the county to find out more about Lancashire's key skills and training initiatives to help with investment in the upskilling and recruitment of people across the county. Making a pledge is a great way of making a commitment and seeing it through, as it adds accountability into the mix, and Lancashire Skills Pledge can help provide you with the tools to achieve those intended commitments.

What pledges can you make?

You can choose from as many of the following eight pledges that you're interested in and/or the ones you're already doing:

Help young people get work 

Volunteer an hour or more to inspire young people in schools and colleges in your local community. Your unique industry knowledge and experience can make a difference to the options a young person considers for their careers.

Become an Apprenticeship Ambassador

As a current apprentice or mentor of Apprentices, you will be supported to champion the benefits of Apprenticeships and promote your organisation to future applicants and share best practice.

Be an Enterprise Advisor

Volunteer and get matched to a school or college, to support their Senior Leadership Team to create inspirational and meaningful encounters for young people within the world of work.

Recruit Lancashire people 

Tailored training programmes based on your recruitment needs where the candidates put forward are already equipped with job-specific skills required to excel in the role, saving time and money on recruiting new staff.

Work experience and industry placements

Offer industry placements and other work experience opportunities to college students.

Upskilling your workforce 

Support and training for your current staff with a flexible approach to delivery, a wide range of options to choose from and may be funded or partially funded.

Take on an apprentice

End to end impartial advice and support to help match you with a provider and support new or existing staff to become an Apprentice and make the Apprenticeship a success.

Offer a placement to a university student

And/or participate in university initiatives.

Benefits of making a pledge

Becoming involved can provide businesses with a better understanding of their workforce and skills needs. Providing placements can develop the management skills of your current workforce, as well as helping to improve your recruitment processes through accessing a pool of students who offer enthusiasm and fresh perspectives to the business.

The opportunity can also enhance your public profile by supporting your local community as well as helping to build strong relationships with a university.

Other benefits include:

  • One door to receive support from experts with extensive networks
  • Funded courses to upskill your staff, from bespoke numeracy courses to Skills Bootcamps offering technical training
  • Upskilling the numeracy skills of your teams
  • Support to recruit and widen your recruitment pool
  • Build a future pipeline of talent
  • Provides evidence of meeting social value outcomes in Lancashire
  • Opportunity for your team to engage with the local community
  • Personal development for your team
  • External validation of your business's Corporate Social Responsibility activity
  • Positive publicity for your business
  • Gain connections with Lancashire's Universities

How to register

Visit Lancashire Skills Hub - sign up to Lancashire Skills Pledge  

Once registered, an expert Pledge Partner will get in touch with you, give you information about the pledges you are interested in and support you to engage with your Pledge.  If you are already engaged with a pledge, registering will give your business recognition for the things it does to upskill, recruit, and inspire the people of Lancashire.

Wider recruitment and training support

For wider support around apprenticeships, training and upskilling see our recruitment and training support section.