Recruit and Develop Staff Funding Opportunities For UK Businesses

What Is Recruit and Develop Staff Funding?

Recruitment and developing staff grants can help businesses who want to develop their workforce by either recruiting new staff, safeguarding existing jobs, training and developing staff and taking on interns.

A recruitment and developing staff funding injection can help businesses carry out their workforce development activities faster or staff related expansion projects than if they were relying on their own existing financial resources. More often than not these recruitment and developing staff funds come from a Government source or from local authorities. In many cases, on a local level funding providers have an interest in getting employers to protect existing jobs, create new jobs by helping businesses expand by opening additional facilities with more staff or to train local people up to have increased skills so that their future prospects are secured. 

Who Are the Main Funding Providers?

Grant providers

Local authorities make up the bulk of grant providers for recruitment and development activity where they can identify specific workforce needs within their communities and help existing local businesses and new SMEs take on staff or provide vital training to their existing employees or offer apprenticeship opportunities. There are also universities who offer internship opportunities at businesses for undergraduates and postgraduates to help them gain vital experience as well as offer subsidised cost workers for the business in question.  There are a few national grant schemes provided by Government agencies or other business enterprise or industry support organisations, such as the Construction Industry Training Board.

Loan providers

There is also regional loan funding available from providers such as The FSE Group, Maven Capital and Mercia Asset Management who run schemes for different areas, such as the North West, Yorkshire, Midlands and Cornwall. This funding can be used for eligible costs towards recruitment and developing staff activities, such as job creation.

There are many cases where loans are offered by Government and other providers where previously a business interested in using funding for recruitment and developing staff activity has been turned down for funding by a private commercial lender, such as a bank or they have not been offered a sufficiently large enough amount to get a staff development project to completion.

What Do You Get The Funds For?

Businesses may seek grants or loans to pay towards a range of different recruitment and developing staff activities, which are briefly outlined below.

• Create New Jobs – Funding to directly support the creation of new, permanent positions within an organisation. This could involve funding salaries, benefits, recruitment costs, or training for new hires.

• Safeguard Jobs – Funding to prevent job losses within existing operations, often during times of economic hardship or industry transition. This may involve funding training programs, wage subsidies, or short-term employment support.

• Business Coaching – Funding to provide professional guidance and support to business owners and managers. This could involve one-on-one coaching sessions, workshops, or access to coaching networks.

• Business Mentoring – Funding to connect entrepreneurs and business owners with experienced mentors who can offer guidance, support, and expertise. This may involve matching grants for mentorship programs or individual matching programs.

• Performance Improvement – Funding to implement initiatives that enhance the performance of existing staff. This could involve training programs, performance management systems, or incentive programs.

• Training and Skills Development – Funding to equip staff with new skills and knowledge relevant to their current or future roles. This could involve funding for specific training courses, certifications, or professional development programs.

• Hiring Interns – Funding to support the recruitment and onboarding of interns within an organisation. This could involve covering intern salaries, supervision costs, or program development expenses.

What Grants Are On Offer?

Here are some examples of grant funding types available

• Apprenticeship Grants – Funding available to provide partial funding towards paying the wages of an apprenticeship position at a business for a set period of time.

• Apprenticeship Levy Transfer Scheme – A specific scheme that allows larger employers who are apprenticeship levy payers to transfer some of their annual levy funding towards smaller businesses to pay for apprenticeship activities.

• Skills Investment Funding – Funding available to encourage businesses to invest in their workforce development, identify areas where staff have skill weaknesses or gaps and put in development processes to ensure continuous improvement of staff.

• Business Development and Growth Funding – A large number of generic business development and growth grants have allowable funding available for job creation and skills and training activities.

• Business Training Grants – Funding that pays for access to training courses and other training activities for employees of a business.

• Industrial Placement Schemes – Funding that allows a business to take on a trainee in an industrial placement for a specific sector with a subsidised wage for a set period of time.

• Employer Recruitment Incentive – Funding within a local area to encourage businesses to take on new staff, in particular those who are younger or are from vulnerable or minority backgrounds or recently lost a job elsewhere.

• Internship Schemes – Funding to pay some of the wages of a recent graduate or an undergraduate seeking a placement to carry out an internship at a business.

• Help to Grow Management Training – Funding specifically to offer access to a subsidised training course for managers and business owners at academic institutions in order to develop their own leadership skills.

• Professional Development Funding – Funding to support professionals within a business gain additional training and qualifications within their areas of expertise.

• UK Shared Prosperity Fund – The UKSPF is a Government levelling up scheme that has been distributed to local authorities that offers a range of funding for people and skills related activities for businesses within a local area.

• Wage Subsidy Grant – Funding is available to help subsidise funding for jobs at risk to help protect local jobs for employers who are struggling with the increased costs of doing business or a downturn.

How Much Funding For Project Costs Is Typically Available? 

Every single scheme is different, for some lower cost recruitment and developing staff grants it is possible to get up to 100% of the costs covered. Other higher costing development activities can see businesses expected to provide a contribution of funding from other sources, ranging from 40% of costs covered by the grant up to about 80% of the development or wage costs covered. In many cases this is to ensure that the grant applicant is financially solvent and serious about completion of the project and willing to take on some of the financial risk themselves. It also means that by receiving partial/matched funding, an employer might be able to take on a higher costing training or recruitment activity than they would have done without the grant. 

From the current set of grants available in the UK for recruitment and development, a total amount awarded as a grant ranges from under £500 for access to a basic training scheme up to over £25,000 for larger scale job creation activities.

Who can apply?

Sole traders are able to apply for both loans and grant funding to carry out new recruitment and development activities in their local area to increase their head count and size of business, up through small to medium sized businesses and large corporations.

How do you apply? 

As the criteria and requirements of recruitment and developing staff funding is complex and varies on individual business needs, some grant and loan providers in this area often invite those interested to submit an initial enquiry and then have a discussion based on needs for their staff, rather than provide a generic application form online to fill out and submit straight away. Some of the more generic training course funding options provide more simple application processes.

Prospective applicants can compare different funding provider options and filter based on their own needs by reading details of what each scheme will fund, what geographic location is covered and the eligibility criteria to apply.

Once both an applicant and funding provider are satisfied that their needs match up, then a more formal application process is issued and the usual financial due diligence checks are carried out and funding is either awarded or a decision not to fund comes with an explanation, so that businesses can take on board feedback against future applications.

When do you apply?

In typical cases of funding applications there is usually a deadline that businesses must adhere to so that limited funding can be processed and applicants can then be considered to be awarded funding. Some funding for training courses has a fixed deadline because training courses have set start dates. Some funding such as the Apprenticeship Levy Transfer Scheme has annual cut-offs where funding must be applied for and used within a specific financial year.

In some cases, funding has been made available to improve the overall work and skills situation in local areas on a longer term basis and that means that these funds stay open far longer than others, in many cases for years to ensure businesses have continued access to job creation and skills funding opportunities. 

When it comes to the actual stage in the recruitment and developing staff project process for a business you would typically apply for the funding before any activity has taken place. The reason for this is because most funding providers will only pay for the paying of wages and training activities that have been approved by them and not for existing staff related costs that are already in place.

Want the Full Set of Recruit and Develop Staff Funding Schemes?

If you want the full set of recruiting and developing staff grants available, you can use our Grants Matcher, or if you want to save yourself the time and effort then tell us about your project funding needs and let us do the work for you.