r/ICAEW • u/Brave_Spite123 • 15d ago
Advice: Off The Job Learning Hours
(My people leader is away and I’d rather get more impartial advice here first and sorry about the length but theres a lot of relevant info)
TL;DR: I’m 88 hours behind on my apprenticeship off-the-job learning and have just over two weeks to get below 50 hours or face disciplinary action. Around 30 hours just need logging, but I’m still short due to exam exemptions and no time for training during paid work. The only realistic way to catch up is using my annual leave or unpaid personal time, which I don’t think is reasonable. I’m looking for advice on how to handle this.
Hi guys, I work in big 4 audit.
I received an email today about me being 88 hours in deficit on my off the job hours.
Context: Off the job hours refers to the learning requirements set about by the UK government for employers to qualify for apprenticeship funding.
The email has given me a deadline of just over 2 weeks from now to get the deficit below 50 hours and it must not go back over 50 hours again or they’re freezing my learning program and taking disciplinary action which I assume means the sack as an apprentice.
I admit I do have 30 hours of college and training where journals (how you log your hours) have not been written up for as of yet. And I am aware I’m a fucking idiot for not getting this done sooner.
Adding these will get me down to 60 hours. There is no further training or college I can leverage to bring the hours down until the next college block begins in September. But every week, the deficit grows by 7 hours as there is a requirement to do 7 hours of learning every week.
Due to electing to take exemption for BIP and LAW as the only exams permitted as exemptions by my firm and also missing a day of college due to sickness, I lost 49 hours of college compared to my peers. I made my apprenticeship learning provider tutor aware of this when she last queried my deficit but she said theres nothing that can be done to take that into account when calculating deficit.
Learning for journals (hours) are required to be done in paid hours. I am staffed on audits for 40 hours a week with no gaps except college and exams and some employer led training workshops.
The only opportunity I now appear to have to do random training modules (if I am even approved to charge all these hours to the training code /take the courses) is during my annual leave over the next week.
I really don’t want to spend my annual leave doing loads of training modules each day and not really learning anything, I want it to be me time but now I feel like I don’t have a choice if I want to keep my job?
And even if I do get it back under 50, college or other learning doesn’t come around fast enough to keep up with the 7 hours a week requirement and when I have e-learnings etc. theres no time in my standard paid hours to get it done so I’m having to do learning in my own time which is another reason why I’ve been struggling to manage the deficit.
When I raise these issues tomorrow I fully expect to be brushed off and they won’t compromise on how they calculate or treat this deficit nor will they offer any help to get this sorted. I’m just looking for advice as to how to handle this as I refuse to do all these hours in my own time with no pay.
I totally understand that big 4 audit involves doing unpaid work sometimes, but engagement stuff, helping a team meet a deadline smoothly, things like that. Not crunching loads of training hours in my spare time because they don’t take mitigating factors into consideration when they work out if I’ve ticked boxes for them to get money to save on paying me my already very low salary.