The ask, plainly

It is an 18-month apprenticeship with 420 hours of off-the-job training — roughly a day a week on average, though in practice it flexes around your operational peaks rather than landing on a fixed day.

The part most managers get wrong at this point: those 420 hours are not 420 extra hours. The majority is your team member’s existing work, restructured so that it counts as evidence. They are still doing the job. They are doing a documented, deliberate version of it.

What you get back

The apprenticeship is built around real improvement projects in your organisation. Your team member finds a process that is eating hours, works out which part of it is a machine’s job, builds that, and proves what it saved. That is the coursework.

• The monthly report that gets rebuilt by hand — built once, then it maintains itself.
• The inbox or request queue that has to be sorted before anything real starts — triaged, drafted and routed automatically.
• The spreadsheet three people update and nobody fully trusts — one version, reconciled without anyone touching it.
• The handover that only works when one particular person is in — documented and automated, so it survives annual leave.

Running underneath all of it: governance, data protection and security. They learn what is safe to automate and, just as importantly, what absolutely is not.

The five questions managers actually ask

Click a question to see the answer.

Can we really afford the time?

This is the fair question, and the honest answer is that the first few months cost you more than they return. The pattern we see is that the balance tips somewhere around the middle of the programme, once the first automation is live and holding. If your team is at absolute breaking point right now, it may be the wrong quarter to start — that is a legitimate answer and we would rather you said it.

What does it cost us?

That depends on your organisation’s apprenticeship funding position, and it is not something to work out from a webpage. It is a short conversation — often shorter than people expect. Book it below and we will give you a straight answer for your specific situation.

They have already done an apprenticeship. Is that allowed?

Usually, yes. A previous apprenticeship — completed or not — does not automatically rule someone out. The test is whether the new one teaches substantially different skills, and AI and automation is about as different from an HR, business administration or coaching standard as it gets. There are conditions, and they depend on your circumstances as much as theirs.

What if they leave?

The uncomfortable question, so here is the uncomfortable answer: they might. But the automations they build stay with you, documented, along with the capability inside the team. And in our experience the people who ask to do this are the ones already thinking about whether there is a future for them where they are — being told yes is one of the more reliable ways to keep them.

Who supports them?

A specialist coach who knows the sector, regular progress reviews, and the same delivery team you may already have worked with. You get visibility of progress throughout — you are not signing up to find out how it went in 18 months’ time.

What happens next

Nothing is committed until the funding position is confirmed and you are satisfied the time works. The next step is one conversation with James Cox, who will look at your specific situation and tell you honestly whether it fits.

If it does not, he will say so.

City Skills  •  city-skills.com  •  0203 870 4836