FAQS

Earning a place in the rankings is a significant milestone. With over 160,000 apprenticeship employers in England, being recognised in the Top 100 or Top 50 SME lists is a massive achievement regardless of your final position—it places your programme among the elite of the industry.

Beyond the prestige, being a Top Employer provides you with:

• Benchmarking & Recognition: Get authentic, external validation from your own apprentices. Seeing how you rank alongside your peers is the ultimate proof of your programme’s quality and the culture you've built.

• Targeted Brand Exposure: Your ranking is listed live on Higherin.com, putting you directly in front of students actively researching their next move. Our school and college partners also share these rankings, significantly extending your reach to future talent.

• Social Assets & Certificates: Amplify your success with bespoke digital assets and certificates designed for your recruitment marketing, website, and social channels.

• Insights & Feedback: Access specific and market-wide feedback from your apprentices. Use these insights to identify trends, tweak your programme, and continuously improve your candidate experience.

• Exclusive Events: Join our community of Top Employers for in-person and online sessions. These events are a space to share trends, industry recommendations, and best practices with other leaders in the field.

• National PR Campaign: Every June, we invest in a major national and local PR push to showcase the rankings. This ensures your brand is highlighted in the press well ahead of National Apprenticeship Week.

Based on feedback from the 2025 rankings, two updates have been introduced for 2026.

1. Achievements - Alongside the number of successful achievements we will also look at the number of those not completing to assess which employers convert the most apprentices from start to completion.

A new question has been added to the entry form to support this:

Between 1st April 2025 and 31st March 2026, how many apprentices at your organisation withdrew from their apprenticeship before completing all requirements or before the End-Point Assessment?

This information will contribute to the Achievements section of the rankings and supports us recognise employers whose apprentices complete their programme.

2. Commitment 

A new measure has been introduced within the Commitment section, Apprentices as a percentage of employees. It uses data already collected to reflect the proportion of apprentices within your overall workforce, recognising organisations with a higher percentage of apprentices.

The Top Apprenticeship Employers is calculated based on a weighted algorithm that has been determined by the partner organisations, Higherin and the Department for Work & Pensions. The rankings measure an employer’s commitment to apprenticeships and the quality of their programmes.

Ranking factors are in three separate categories as follows:

• Achievements - This criteria rewards employers whose apprentices complete their programme, valuing employers who converted the most apprentices from start to completion.

• Commitment - We’ve valued Commitment as:

  • Total apprenticeship opportunities offered by the employer - this criteria rewards employers with the greatest commitment to apprenticeships within their organisations, including as a proportion of apprentices within the workforce.

  • We also value the range of programmes offered - Considering the range of entry points, this criteria rewards employers with multiple routes into their organisations, such as Intermediate, Advanced, Higher & Degree.

  • We also recognise those employers who foster inclusive environments and provide opportunities for a wider range of talent. By considering the diversity of apprenticeship cohorts, we ensure that the rankings reflect employers who are committed to offering equal opportunities to individuals from all backgrounds.

• Reviews - The third segment of the rankings criteria is based purely on apprentice or learner feedback within the reviews written on HigherIn.com. The first being:

• Average review rating - All reviews submitted between 1st June2025 & 1st May 2026, and we’ve used the average rating per employer across all their reviews

• Total reviews submitted - this rewards encouraging reviews above the minimum eligibility threshold… which is a minimum of 10 reviews for the Top 100 & a minimum of one review for the Top 50… rewarding employers for breadth of feedback

• Reviews as percentage of intake - Considering the volume of feedback in relation to the overall cohort, this criteria rewards employers who have a high volume of feedback in comparison to their intake, thus ensuring the feedback we receive is as reflective as possible of the overall experience

• And finally, the percentage of apprentices who would recommend their employer to a friend. Question nine in the review form asks ‘Would you recommend <CompanyName> to a friend? With Yes or No tickbox options. As you can probably expect, the criteria here rewards employers with the highest percentages of apprentices recommending their employer to a friend.

The exact dates will be updated shortly. For now, please find the estimated timelines below:

• January: Start encouraging reviews

• February/March: Entry form is opened

• 1st May: 

  • Entry form closes at 23:59

  • Deadline for apprentice reviews on Higherin

• May: Entry is now closed. Ranking is determined using the weighting criteria

• June/July: Results are announced and promotion packs are sent to Top Employers

• September: Celebration event for The Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers and The Top 50 SME Apprenticeship Employers

Apprenticeship reviews on Higherin.com are a verifiable, authentic method of determining how many unique apprentices are in your cohort - and also offers a window into their experience on your apprenticeship programme.

As well as using these reviews for your ranking, encouraging these reviews from your cohort comes with a range of benefits including:

• Gaining valuable insights into your schemes from the people who really matter.

• Reduce the risk of reneged offers by encouraging applications from like-minded apprentices, informed by your reviews.

• Raise awareness of your brand with 16-24 year olds across the UK.

Anyone on a formal apprenticeship scheme with you can review. They can be a school 

leaver or a mature learner upskilling or reskilling. 

Your cohort can be in any year of their scheme and can re-review for each year of their scheme. 

Eligible reviewers for this year’s Top Apprenticeship Employers 2026 must have been employed by you and on an apprenticeship at some point during 01 April 2025 and 31 March 2026.

Apprentices can be mid-way through their experience, however we recommend they review once they’ve completed a minimum of six months to ensure they provide reflective, rounded and valuable feedback. 

If apprentices submitted a review last year, they can submit a new review this year and for every year of their apprenticeship; apprentices can submit a maximum of five reviews through their account to encourage this multi-year feedback.

Some suggestions from our previous Top Apprenticeship Employers include: 

• Prioritise - Make reviews part of the end-of-programme process to ensure a broad mix of responses.

• Incentivise - Offer incentives, such as prize draws or vouchers, and integrate reviews into key events like awards ceremonies.

• Schedule - Create a dedicated time and space for reviews in the office, such as a “Rate and Cake” session.

• Align - If apprentices are in demanding roles, align review collection with existing surveys or initiatives to boost engagement.

• Collaborate - Share the workload by dividing outreach among the team and involving managers to follow up with those who haven’t submitted a review.

You can also check out our “How To Encourage Reviews” document here.

Collecting reviews on Higherin.com is straightforward and doesn't require you to set up a profile in advance. Here is a simple step-by-step guide to help you navigate the process:

• Direct Your Apprentices - Ask your apprentices to visit Higherin.com and create a free account. They don't need a special link; they can start the review process immediately.

• The "Auto-Profile" Feature - You do not need to create a company profile yourself. Once the first review is submitted and passes moderation, our system automatically generates a profile for your company.

• Selecting the Company Name - When reviewers begin, they should type your company name in the "What company is this review for?" box:

  • If it appears: They simply select it from the dropdown.

  • If it doesn’t appear: They should click the "Create" option (highlighted in bold) in the dropdown to add your company to our database.

• The Moderation Process - Every review is checked against our T&Cs. Once approved, the review goes live, and your company becomes a selectable option for all future reviewers.

• Managing Multiple Listings - If you notice duplicate company names (e.g., "Company Ltd" vs. "Company LLP"), don't worry! You can use the "Report this review" feature or contact us to request a merge. We also manually audit and merge duplicates when creating our rankings.

• Best Practices for Success

  • Start Early - Give your apprentices plenty of time to submit before any deadlines.

  • Encourage Honesty - Remind them that reviews are anonymous.

  • Boost Engagement - Consider hosting dedicated review sessions or offering small incentives to increase participation.

The Top Apprenticeship Employers aims to provide a well-rounded and dynamic picture of the apprenticeship landscape, showcasing employers who foster inclusive environments and provide opportunities for a wider range of talent. By considering the diversity of your apprenticeship cohort, we ensure that the rankings reflect employers who are committed to offering equal opportunities to individuals from all backgrounds. This approach ultimately strengthens the overall value and fairness of the rankings.

Your HR team is likely to have this data, either from recruitment records, internal reporting, or HR systems. If your apprenticeships are delivered through a training provider, they may also hold relevant diversity information. Some organisations track this data for government reporting (e.g. DfE or Ofsted), so checking past submissions may help. If there are gaps, an internal survey could provide additional insights. If in doubt, your HR team or training provider should be able to guide you.

To ensure consistency with ILR (Individualised Learner Record) data verification requirements, the entry form currently aligns with the gender categories used in official apprenticeship data reporting.

At present, this reporting framework records male and female data only.

We recognise the importance of representing all gender identities and are committed to reviewing how the rankings can evolve in line with developments in national data collection and best practice in inclusive reporting. Our intention is to ensure that the rankings remain both verifiable and reflective of the diverse apprenticeship community.

We don’t display salaries on reviews. We only collect this information for benchmarking and reporting purposes. We will always aggregate this salary data by the apprenticeship level, job role, industry or location when sharing industry insights.

To ensure accuracy and consistency, in 2026 the rankings will be based on apprenticeship intakes in England, using data that is independently verifiable through the Government.

While any student can submit a review, apprenticeship standards differ across the devolved nations. Each nation has its own regulatory framework, funding models, and qualification structures, making direct comparison challenging at this stage. However, we are actively working to build relationships with stakeholders in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, with the long-term ambition of expanding the rankings to recognise top apprenticeship employers across the whole of the UK.

To keep the rankings fair and balanced, we operate a "one entry per brand" policy for franchises and multi-site organisations. While we recognise that many franchises operate as independent SMEs, all individual sites (like salons, restaurants, or branches) must consolidate their data into a single national submission under the main brand name. This ensures that large-scale franchise models are measured consistently alongside other national employers.

For umbrella groups with various subsidiaries, we understand these often operate as entirely different businesses with their own P&Ls and apprenticeship programmes. In this case, you can enter under each specific subsidiary. We simply ask for a Companies House Number for each entry to ensure it is a legal entity—Siemens is a great example of an employer that enters via multiple subsidiaries like Siemens Mobility and Siemens Healthineers.

Alternatively, if you would prefer to have all subsidiaries merged under one overarching company, we can do that too. Just be sure to decide on your approach before submitting, as you cannot change or alternate your approach once your entry is in. Please clarify your preference on your entry form and ensure all submissions are completed before we close on 1st May 2026.

No. There is no cost to enter the Top Apprenticeship Employers rankings. Entry is free to ensure participation remains open to all eligible employers and that recognition is based on apprentice experience, programme quality and organisational commitment rather than the ability to pay an entry fee.

As we’re already mid-way through the review period for the Top Apprenticeship Employers rankings for 2026, I’m sure you can appreciate that for consistency and fairness across all reviewers, we can’t amend the review questions for this year as we’ve had thousands of reviews already submitted using the current review questions.

That said, we review the process each year and listen to all feedback. This suggestion to speak to more existing colleagues upskilling & reskilling has been added to our list of improvement areas to review ahead of the 2027 review period which will commence January 2027.

If you asked this question / left this feedback and have specific examples or ideas for any review question amends, we’d welcome your suggestions - please contact us:

https://www.top-apprenticeshipemployers.co.uk/contact-us