Advice from an HR consultant in Suffolk on the £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant and £2,000 apprenticeship incentive, and how to prepare your business before you apply.
I’ve been speaking to a lot of small business owners recently who are feeling the pinch when it comes to staffing costs.
NI contributions have gone up. Statutory payments have increased. New compliance duties keep landing. Every quarter, it feels like employing people gets a little more expensive.
So when the government announces a cash incentive to help you bring someone into your team, it’s worth stopping to look at the detail.
But the money is only part of the picture. Let me walk you through what’s on offer and what you’ll want to have sorted before you apply.
The rising cost of building a team
If you run a small business, you’ll already know that your wage bill doesn’t tell the full story of what your people cost you. Employer National Insurance went up following the last budget. Day-1 Statutory Sick Pay is now part of the Employment Rights Act. Leave entitlements have expanded. And the list of things you’re expected to comply with keeps growing.
All of this adds up. It means every hiring decision carries more financial weight than it did even a year ago.
At the same time, youth unemployment is sitting near a 5-year high. As of late 2025, roughly 957,000 young people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training. That’s a huge pool of potential talent that many small businesses haven’t considered tapping into.
What the government is putting on the table
The Youth Jobs Grant offers £3,000 towards employing an 18 to 24 year old who has been unemployed for at least 6 months. It sits within the £1bn Youth Guarantee expansion, and the government expects it to support around 60,000 young people into work over a 3-year period.
Separately, there’s a £2,000 apprenticeship incentive aimed at small employers who take on an apprentice aged 16 to 24.
Both are designed to reduce the upfront cost of bringing younger workers into your business. If the expense of hiring has been holding you back, these grants are worth a serious look.
Why apprenticeships deserve your attention right now
Apprenticeship numbers have fallen quite a bit in recent years. Schools and colleges are now telling students that finding a placement is harder than it used to be.
For you as an employer, that’s actually an opportunity. There are keen young people actively searching for a chance to learn and work, and fewer businesses competing to offer them one.
The £2,000 payment makes the sums more workable for smaller businesses that previously couldn’t justify the cost. If you’ve ever considered developing someone from scratch rather than fighting over experienced candidates in a tight market, now is a sensible time to explore it.
The bit that matters more than the money
A grant covers some of the cost of getting someone through the door. It won’t help if that person walks out again after eight weeks because their first few months were chaotic.
Younger workers, particularly those who’ve been out of work for a while, tend to need more guidance and structure in the early stages. They need to know what’s expected of them. They need regular check-ins with someone who has the time to support them properly.
And from January 2027, unfair dismissal rights will apply after just 6 months of employment. That makes it even more important to get every new hire settled and performing well from the outset.
Before you apply for either grant, ask yourself honestly:
- Do you have a structured induction that covers the first week and beyond?
- Are expectations for the role written down clearly, not just in your head?
- Is there a named person who will manage and support the new starter day to day?
- Do you have a probation process that’s documented and actually followed through?
The financial support takes care of one type of risk. Having the right processes in place takes care of the rest.
Thinking beyond this one hire
If experienced workers keep getting more expensive to recruit, the way you build your workforce may need to shift. More small businesses are starting to look at apprenticeships, graduate routes, adult apprenticeships and supported hiring programmes as realistic alternatives to competing for the same candidates as everyone else.
The grants available right now are a good starting point. But it’s worth giving some thought to your longer-term approach to finding and developing people, especially as employer costs continue to climb. Through our HR consultancy services in Suffolk, we’re already helping business owners think through exactly this kind of planning.
How we can help you get ready
If you’re interested in the Youth Jobs Grant or the apprenticeship incentive but you’re not confident your onboarding, probation or management setup is where it needs to be, we can help you get those foundations right before your new person starts.
We can also work with you on deciding what type of role would suit your business best, how to plan the first few months, and how to stay on the right side of the new employment rules.
As an outsourced HR consultant in Suffolk, I work with small businesses like yours every day, and I’d be happy to have an informal chat about what would work for you. Get in touch and we’ll take it from there.
