Overview

This Employer Portal Guide is to help you, as an Employer, with your Aptem account. Your Employer Account only gives you access to information stored within your own Organisation Profile. 

Users can be directly associated with your Organisation. For example, this takes place when users are enrolled onto an apprenticeship scheme. These users will be listed in your Employer Users section of your Organisation Profile.

Aptem can also be used to complete, sign and counter-sign documentation from all parties who use the system. Many externally funded programmes require the completion of Compliance Documentation to prove registration, receive funding and demonstrate outcomes.

Note: This article is applicable to Employers using Aptem classic. If you are using the Employer console, see: Getting started with the Employer console.

Activation

You will be sent an email inviting you to activate your Aptem account – it will look like this:

Use the link provided to activate your account. You will be taken to the following screen. Choose a username and password.

Aptem will automatically use your email address for your login, but you can set a different one if you wish.

Once you have created your username and password, you will be asked to confirm your personal details and to create an online digital signature.

The Employer Portal

When you log into your Employer account you will see a navigation panel containing ‘tiles’ near the top of screen. A bold orange circle on a tile will notify you of new updates within that tile. There is a tile for each function within the system. Each tile can be clicked upon in order to access the relevant function or report details.

Navigation Tiles

The following tiles may be enabled in your Employer account, although the colours may be different. 

Organisation Profile

By default, the profile page for your organisation will be displayed when you sign into your Aptem Employer account. Alternatively, click on the ‘Organisation Profile’ tile in the navigation panel. 

From this page you can view your Organisation’s profile page by expanding the sections. This is displayed below:  

• Details - View and edit your Organisation Profile  
• Contact - Update and add new contacts from your Organisation 
• Address - Add new addresses for your organisation 
• Application Steps - Allows the editing of the application process for a placement/workshop  
• Documents - The documents section can be used to share public documents with your training provider. To add new documents to this section, click on ‘upload’. Please note that all documents in this section will be visible to Aptem administrators from your training provider 
• Employer Users - This section of the Organisation profile lists the existing employees within your organisation who are enrolled onto an apprenticeship. Click on an individual’s name to view progress against their learning plan 
• Events - Manage, view, add and delete events  
• Placements/Workshops - As an employer you may create placements/workshops if this function has been enabled for your account. You can add additional short-term work placements that can be filled by your training provider and Placements/Workshops that are delivered at your location, will be listed here too.

Employer Users section:  

This section of the Organisation Profile Report lists the existing employees within your organisation who are enrolled onto an Apprenticeship.

Monitoring employee progress on their Learning Plan:

Each employee will be enrolled onto a blended Learning Plan, where progress and outcomes are tracked against standards comprising of Skills, Knowledge and/or Behaviours. 

A learning plan comprises a set of learning activities. This can include courses, assessments and work placements managed through Aptem. It equally involves external learning and assessment activities where the evidence is uploaded against the user’s Aptem profile.

Clicking on an employee’s name in the Employer Users section of your organisation’s profile will take you to that learners’ profile. You can access the Learning Plan by scrolling down to programme section and clicking ‘Learning Plan Overview’ on the right-hand side.  

By default, progress is shown against the programme components. However, clicking on the ‘Apprenticeship Standard’ tab shows progress against the criteria.

The Learning Plan feature allows the delivery and monitoring of blended learning programmes. It is particularly suited to apprenticeship programmes where progress and outcomes are tracked against standards. It can furthermore be used for any programme assessed against structured criteria and indicators, for example, NVQs and other qualifications.

A Learning Plan comprises a set of learning activities. This can include courses, assessments, workshops, and placements managed through Aptem. It can equally involve external learning and assessment activities where the evidence is uploaded against the user’s Aptem profile.

A Learning Plan also requires a set of criteria against which the learning activities have been mapped. This includes, for example, Skills, Knowledge and Behaviours from an apprenticeship standard or assessment criteria from a qualification. Learning activities can be simultaneously mapped against, for example, an Apprenticeship Standard and a certification or qualification. As users complete the activities in the plan a portfolio of evidence is collected. This shows that the users have fulfilled the associated criteria or standards.

The learning plan is effective in tracking progress against an Apprenticeship Standard whether the training content does or does not include a qualification. Under current ESFA funding guidelines (2018) an apprenticeship requires the following components. These should be included in the Aptem Learning plan: 

• Assessment and evidence of Level 2 functional skills in English and Mathematics. A link to a third-party assessment can be added as an item to the learning plan. Otherwise, the learner can upload prior evidence of achieving GCSE grade C (or grade 5, post-2018) and above in these subjects or equivalent.
• Regular planned progress review meetings between the training provider and the learner. These events (e.g. fortnightly) are automatically populated in the learner’s plan and task list.
• Quarterly review meetings between the learner, their employer, and the training provider. These are automatically populated from the user’s start date on the learning plan
• End Point Assessment (EPA) Gateway Assessment. Before taking the EPA, there must be a check to ensure that the learner has meet the assessment plan requirements. This includes English and Mathematics qualifications (where applicable), on-programme mandatory qualifications (where applicable) as well as evidence that the learner has achieved the required knowledge, skills, and behaviours.
• End Point Assessment (EPA) Review. The end-point assessment can only be taken after both the minimum duration of the apprenticeship has been completed and the earliest due date will be automatically populated.

Viewing learning plan evidence:

When viewing an Employee’s Learning Plan, you will be shown a status. The status of each of the Learning Plan components are as follows:  

• Grey - Not started
• Blue - In progress
• Amber - Imminent deadline
• Green - completed 
• Red - Overdue item or incomplete 

For components delivered or managed through Aptem (e.g. Aptem courses, learning Placements/Workshops, and Assessment forms), the user can click on the relevant link to start or continue with that Component.  

The detail for each component can be viewed by clicking on the relevant ‘expand’ icon. This will display any instructions, a deadline date (if set) and percentage progress for that component. It will also show the option to upload learning evidence for that specific learning activity.  

By default, all components are displayed in ‘collapsed’ mode which shows only the component title and status icon. The list can be filtered by status type e.g. evidence required.

Clicking on the title of a component will display more details. This will expand the section to show the following:  

• A list of existing evidence that has been uploaded.
• A link to upload new evidence as a Microsoft Word, PDF, Image, Audio, Video file etc. 
• To add evidence to a component, click on the ‘Upload file or add note’ link, and from the dropdown list select ‘File’. Note that selecting ‘note’ allows the user to add a text comment to their Learning Plan.

Once uploaded, the Learning Plan page will automatically update to show the uploaded but unapproved evidence. The Case Owner for the learner will automatically receive notification via email and the Aptem Collaboration Centre that the user has submitted evidence against their Learning Plan. 

Once submitted, the user’s view of the Learning Plan will show the status “Evidence submitted” for that learning activity. The Learning Plan will display ‘in progress’ against the individual evidence item. The status will be automatically updated once the evidence has been accepted or declined.

Placements and Workshops

You may create work placements if this function has been enabled for your account.

• A Placement/Workshop can be used to refer to work experience, industrial experience, a training workshop, temporary work or even a place on an external course.
• The system is designed to allow the creation of multiple placement/workshop positions at an organisation for a given period. Users can be enrolled onto the placements until all available positions are filled.
• If an organisation is offering different types of work experience e.g. warehouse and office work, then separate placements should be created for each category of work.
• If an organisation offers placements or workshops in different time periods, it is recommended that a new placement is created for each time period. For example, this would be the case if an organisation were to offer a two-week placement in January and another two-week placement in March.

Once you select the Placements/Workshops tile, you will see the page above. Here you can view, edit, delete, and create a new Placements/Workshops. 

To create a new Placement/Workshop, click on the create button, the ‘Add Placement/Workshop’ page will be displayed:

1. Choose the placement’s type of work from the predefined dropdown list.
2. Select the address and contact for the placement from the dropdown list or click on ‘+’ to add a new contact/address for the placement.
3. Enter a title for the placement.
4. Type a short description of the duties involved in the work experience placement. This description will be visible to users when they are enrolled onto a placement.
5. Complete the working hours for the placement. Separate sessions during the day, such as morning and afternoon excluding a lunch break can be accounted for. Click on ‘+ Add another session’ to set the hours, for, per this example, the morning period. Then, click this link again to set the hours for the afternoon period. The provider/employer will be able to verify that a user has completed these hours while on placement.
6. Enter the number of positions available for the work placement. Users can be enrolled onto a placement until all positions are filled.
7. Finally click “Save” to create the placement. The placement details and current status will be visible in the Placements page.

Candidates

The status of Placements/Workshops provided by your organisation can be monitored in terms of enrolments, numbers shortlisted and applications.  

The Candidates report displays the list of people who have applied for or been shortlisted for any placements in your organisation. The list can be filtered by status and application step.  

This page can also be used to manage the applications to your Organisation’s placements. 

Once you select the Candidates tile, the Candidates report will be displayed: 

The details of each placement/workshop, including the application steps, can be edited by clicking on the title of the relevant placement.

Signatures 

The signatures tile indicates how many documents that the Employer needs to sign. You can filter this grid to ‘Employer signature’ with a value of “No” and only documents that need you as the Employer to sign will be displayed. If required, the Employer can equally see where the learner still needs to sign. 

• Availability of compliance documents as electronic templates e.g. ILR, Commitment Statement
• Ability to electronically sign documents
• Automatic population of documentation with relevant information stored within Aptem

• Document name – The name of the relevant compliance documentation.
• Username – This is the learner name.
• Case Owner – The Administrator assigned to a learner.
• Date – The date that the compliance documentation was submitted.
• User signature – This shows whether the user has electronically signed this.
• Employer signature – If a colleague has signed the Compliance Document, your colleague’s name will be displayed here. If this has not been the case, this will be displayed as ‘No’.
• Admin signature - If one of your training provider’s colleagues has signed the Compliance Document, that person’s name will be displayed here. If this has not been the case, this will be displayed as ‘No’.

By clicking the Username, it will take you back to the learners’ profile page. Scroll down to the Compliance Documents section and update next to the document you would like to view. Any yellow box on a compliance document means that you can put the relevant information in here. Any Compliance Documentation that has ‘No’ Employer signature means that you can sign in the box that asks you to ‘click here to add your signature’.

Review Signatures

In this tile, you can see all Review Documentation for your learners. Any documentation that requires your signature will be displayed in this list as well as previous Reviews that have already been signed.

Collaboration Centre

The Aptem Collaboration Centre™ allows Employers and Administrators to communicate with users. The Collaboration Centre achieves this by sending messages, reminders of missed milestones as well as notifications of new tasks. The Collaboration Centre interface will be familiar to those who use messaging apps such as Facebook and Skype.

Note that Employers can send messages and interact through the Collaboration Centre with any Aptem learner within their account. Once a learner receives a message from an Administrator, the learner can reply. Users are only able to message their account owner, designated employer contact or other administrators who have initiated contact with them. However, users are not able to message other users. You will be notified by email of any new messages in the Collaboration Centre. In addition, when you sign into your Aptem account, the left-hand side of the navigation panel will display an orange dot. Once you select the Collaboration Centre tile, the left-hand panel of this page shows all those with whom you have been messaging.   

• Contacts who are currently online are outlined in green. 
• Click on a contact’s name to view messages from that contact.

Messages include text-based message and automated reminders of tasks as well as Placements/Workshops. 

Click on the user’s name to be able to send message to them.