Everything with the learner at heart: a Q&A with Tracy Martin, Lifetime Training

If you work at a Training Provider delivering end-point assessment programmes, you will know that your learner is your north star. 

How confident they are to leap into the world of work is a direct measure of the vital work you do to support them and their employers. 

However, even a training provider with the best intentions can be frustrated if their systems don’t help them. 

That’s why Lifetime Training, with its learner-centric ethos and powerful EPA management platform, isn’t just trusted to deliver over 20,000 apprenticeships every year: but also to shape the future of training in the UK. 

We talked to Tracy Martin, Quality Manager of Hospitality at Lifetime, to understand how epaPRO has helped them play such a key role in aligning apprentices and industry. 

Tracy, can you tell us a bit about Lifetime Training and your ethos? 

Lifetime is the largest provider of skills development programmes in the UK. We have over 25 years of experience delivering apprenticeships, and 20,000 learners every year train with us across 40 different standards. 

Our ethos is learner-focused and geared towards developing the workforce of tomorrow. To my mind, everyone should have the chance to learn skills, and for us, it’s a privilege to be a trainer and to shape the future of the UK’s job market. 

What does a day in your role involve? 

Every day is different, which makes my role very exciting.  

Day-to-day, I work to ensure quality in our hospitality training programmes, working with Learning Coaches, Area Managers and learners directly to deliver an experience that will prepare them for the world of work. 

Equally, I’m responsible for many of our strategic activities, such as preparing for Ofsted inspections, producing our readiness pieces, and liaising with awarding bodies, EPAOs and IfATE. 

How do you train learners to be ready for the world of work? 

In many ways: but one key difference is how we align with our employer partners.  

From the very beginning, we collaborate with employers to assess standards and work in tandem with their people plan to support them in filling their skills gaps.  

Employers have access to learning coaches who all come from their industry and can support them as they deliver their key role in EPA. 

This means that the employer understands their role and can define key milestones and outcomes for the apprentice: as well as see a tangible impact on their business, too. 

Of course, that world of work is changing  – how is Lifetime adapting? 

We embrace evolution, but the most important thing is to be proactive, not reactive. 

For example, upskilling apprentices and employers digitally is one of our key focuses at the moment, but if you look at examples of more ‘urgent’ challenges, such as COVID and the cost-of-living, we put a lot of effort into supporting them and their apprentices through these, too. 

Fundamentally, whether it’s the curriculum, quality or our partnerships with our EPAOs, every decision we make, at whatever level, has the learner at heart. 

Does epaPRO help you in achieving those goals? 

Absolutely.  

Everyone involved in EPA delivery internally – the area manager, learning coach and operational teams – has access to it. It is our real-time tracking and communications channel that lets them reach out to people and get things done quickly. 

The fact that it’s so user-friendly means that it can reduce an extraordinary amount of admin. That let us focus on what matters: providing a support system to our partners. 

How does epaPRO help you personally in your Quality role? 

It makes a massive difference in reporting, and it gives me insights into things that matter at both an individual and a strategic level. 

For example, if I see a report around first time pass rates, I can understand that we need to make strategic changes – be it to training, guidance or digital assets – or even provide individual support to a learner. 

In those cases where an employer has access to epaPRO, it’s invaluable that they can see the results too – and it leads to interesting conversations, they can question our approach, and you can’t match that kind of transparency. 

At a higher level, it provides invaluable information when I have conversations with IfATE.  

Between what we hear from employers and apprentices on the ground, and the data we get from epaPRO, we can project the voice of learners and employers directly to those who can make the changes we need to see. 

We would like to thank Tracy for her time. 

If Tracy’s story resonates with you, we don’t doubt it’s because you are committed to delivering the best quality of training for EPA that you can. That means removing all the barriers of your legacy systems and centralising all of your essential functions into a single, easy-to-use platform. 

It’s a simpler change to make than you think, but it can transform the way you deliver training during EPA. If you want to see just how it could work at your Training Provider, all you need to do is book a short demo to see it in action. 

Further reading: 

• Learn in less than 2 minutes why Training Providers ask for epaPRO by name 

• Nearly half of all apprentices are dropping out of their courses. What can training providers do to turn the tide?