What we do
From skills gap to good work.
We help employers build critical skills in leadership, AI, data and digital that lead to good work. Our work across SMEs, schools, the NHS and sport organisations leads to measurable change for employer and employee alike.
Where people or organisations can't fund this themselves, we often can: putting underused investment such as the Growth and Skills Levy behind training that gets people into good work and keeps them there.
How we can help you
Work changes, so the skills required change too. Learning, therefore, should not stop when we leave education, but continue throughout our working lives. At Maikai, we understand both lifelong learning and the funding systems that make it possible. The result is more investment in skills and greater returns from that investment, both economic and social.
We manage the entire process: designing the programme to fit learners’ specific needs, managing the funding where appropriate, onboarding learners, delivery and reporting. The administrative burden sits with us, not you.
Our process is four steps: assess, fund, share and deliver.
Assess
Find out what's missing.
A skills gap is the distance between the work that needs doing and what your people can currently do. It shows up as roles you can't fill, work you can't take on and people leaving to learn elsewhere. Every organisation has one somewhere; most don't know exactly where. Our AI Skills Checker maps it in detail: what skills your people have now, what they'll need next and where the biggest risks and opportunities sit.
Schools use it to see where students need support; employers use it to plan training investment instead of guessing. The Checker starts with AI, the fastest-growing gap; the full assessment covers your whole skills picture.
Fund
Access funding that's already yours.
Every UK employer with a payroll over £3m pays into the Growth and Skills Levy (formerly the Apprenticeship Levy) automatically. Most don't use all of it, and unspent funds expire after 12 months.
We help you find out exactly what you have and put it to work before it's gone. If you don't pay the levy, we can still fund your training with levy gifted by employers that do.
From what's missing to what's funded: one connected system.
Share
Put surplus levy to work for others.
If your organisation doesn't need all of its levy, you can gift the surplus to other employers — funding training for people who would otherwise never get it — at no cost to you.
Gifted levy is one route of several. We also draw on other government funding where programmes qualify, and we convene employers, funders and local authorities around shared skills priorities, so one organisation's programme becomes a channel others can join.
Deliver
Good work, from apprenticeships to upskilling.
We connect learners with vetted, accredited training providers for SMEs, enterprises and schools, and track outcomes all the way through.
See where your gaps are.
Take the four-minute AI Skills Checker →The levy route
Putting your levy to work, stage by stage
The Growth and Skills Levy is the most common way our programmes are funded. Click through the five stages to see how an organisation goes from unused levy to training delivered and tracked.
Stage 1 of 5
You have unused levy
Your Growth and Skills Levy sits in your Apprenticeship Service Account. Unspent funds now expire unused after 12 months.
Worked example
From unused levy to trained people
- 1
£135,000 sits unused in a company's levy account, six months before it will start to expire.
- 2
Maikai’s AI Skills Checker flags a specific gap: digital, data and AI skills across two teams.
- 3
The full £135,000 is confirmed as accessible, compliance handled in under a week.
- 4
The employer puts £70,000 into AI and data training for its own teams and gifts £65,000, just under the half an employer is allowed to gift, to Maikai programmes for NEETs, SMEs or schools.
- 5
Five people trained across the business in AI and data, delivering positive ROI from day one. Two NEETs on apprenticeships with local employers. Four teachers from the local school on the AI for Schools Programme. All managed end-to-end by Maikai, including social value reporting.
Instead of expiring unused, £135,000 trained the company's own people and funded apprenticeships for people it may never employ.