What do time, competency, and hybrid apprenticeships mean?

When we're working with new clients, or when we're speaking to someone about their apprenticeship, we'll often ask what type of apprenticeship they have. There's many ways to answer that, but what we mean is "how are you measuring on-the-job training progress?"

The Apprenticeship Approach

If you register an apprenticeship, you'll be tasked with defining your apprenticeship standards. A key part of those standards is the Appendix A (or Exhibit A in some states) that defines how you're actually going to run your program. One of the very first things defined on an Appendix A is the Apprenticeship Approach. It looks like this:

Apprenticeships can be structured in three ways time-based, competency-based, or hybrid. By approach, this document refers to the approach for measuring apprenticeship on-the-job training (OJT) progress. Are you going to measure OJT progress by accumulated hours? Accumulated skills? Or both? Let's explain the differences.

Time-based Apprenticeships

The time-based approach is how all apprenticeships were originally measured and how many continue to do so today. Many states previously provided booklets with a grid on each page where apprentices would enter their hours spent in various categories, and a journeyworker or supervisor would sign off on their completion each month.

Apprentices are measured on their progress by completing a minimum number of on-the-job training (OJT) hours. For example, say the apprenticeable occupations list has determined a carpenter needs 8,000 hours of OJT (remember the 2,000 hour rule) to complete an apprenticeship. They'd then be expected to track where they spent those 8,000 hours from a preset list of categories -- 1,000 hours in form building, 1,200 in rough framing, etc.

Each month, the apprentice would make progress towards completing their various categories. By the end, they should've completed the total number of hours AND the number of hours for each category that makes up the total.

Competency-based Apprenticeships

Competency-based apprenticeship are a bit more new. The competency-based approach contends that what matters isn't time spent in a various category of work. What matters, instead, is can you actually complete a series of essential skills or competencies that are part of the job. It may take one apprentice 100 hours to accrue a skill that another can learn in 20 hours. This way, the skill matters more than time spent. For competency-based apprenticeships, rather than have the apprentices fill out and submit hours, the supervisor or journeyworker is periodically assessing their apprentices on a list of skills to see if they're sufficient and accrued any new skills.

Hybrid Apprenticeships

Hybrid apprenticeships are really a mix of the two approaches above. Hybrid apprenticeships highlight that you need to actually learn the skills AND accrue enough service time in your field of work. Now, right off the bat, its worth distinguishing there can be different types of hybrid interpretations. At WorkHands, we've come to label hybrid as either strict or light. Strict hybrid programs do everything -- their apprentices submit hours by high-level categories of work or work processes, and supervisors assess apprentices on particular skills. Continuing the earlier carpentry example, their apprentices track hours spent in form building, rough framing, etc. to add up to the total OJT hours while their supervisors assess on particular skills.

Light hybrid programs are slightly different. They're essentially competency-based with minimum hours. Rather than breakdown OJT hours by categories or work processes, these programs just track the minimum number of OJT hours, total, rather than having them categorically broken down.

Pros and Cons

There are arguments for any of the above approaches, but here are some pros and cons of each:

Time-based

• Pro: Time-based programs are easy to compare and standardize across programs since you're only comparing a few categories

• Pro: Time-based programs put the onus of tracking on the apprentice to pay attention and track what they're learning

• Con: Time-based programs may require more time spent if an apprentice can learn skills quickly

• Con: Time-based programs may have apprentices with certain gaps in their skill base

Competency-based

• Pro: Competency-based apprentices absolutely have to learn and demonstrate a complete set of skills to progress

• Pro: Time-spent is less important and apprentices can learn at their own pace, often allowing for faster completion

• Pro: The exacting nature of competency-based programs appears more modern, more meritocratic. Tracking hours feels antiquated.

• Con: Competency-based apprenticeships put the onus of tracking on supervisors who must complete periodic skill assessments. Its much more passive for apprentices.

• Con: Competency-based apprenticeships specificity is the enemy of standardization across organizations. It's hard to compare number of skills, skill wording, etc. because competencies are defined by individual sponsors

• Con: Compentecy-based programs need to ensure supervisors consistently identify what constitutes skill completion so that a completed skill means the same thing across supervisors.

Hybrid

• Pro: By doing both methods, hybrid programs mitigate many of the cons of time- and competency-based apprenticeships. You have both well rounded and exactly competency apprentices

• Con: There's a lot more tracking to be done, potentially risking paperwork burnout amongst both apprentices and supervisors.

As you can see, each approach has benefits and drawbacks. So before deciding you can also take the following into consideration: the apprenticeship occupation, employer organizational culture, and apprenticeship system in the state where the occupation will be registered.

Generally, we'd advise going with the simplest approach to start because you can always track more than required. For example, we've seen several programs register as time-based programs but also track competencies for their apprentices. This way they have the exact skills their apprentices are completing, but they're doing more than is required in their standards so they're not liable if they decide to fall back on just the one approach.