Watch the Skills and Training session from Worcestershire: The BIG Conversation.
Hear about the current landscape in the county and where the challenges and opportunities are to continue progressing the Skills and Training agenda in Worcestershire.
[Applause] right um we’re now moving on to the main agenda um so we’re going to start with the skills session and typically usual thing with skills we’re going to play your video potential everyone’s got potential right but it will remain just that unless you act on it [Music] you’ve got to do something new you got this to get somewhere new let me see let me see have a look is it scary it be fine sure but potential never fades it simply waits for the day you use it so go on make that one day today whether you’re growing your business okay can we take our seats please switching careers or just starting out it all starts with skills search skills for life thank you and that is a that’s a government video and and actually I think it actually catches the essence of the skills work that we do so um I’d now like to invite Judy Gibbs who’s the director of skills at the LEP and the skills investment manager at the County Council I’m also going to give her the clicker cuz I’ve decided I need a training course on back and next OT thank you starts with me so next slide um so in 2023 we did lots of business engagement um we worked with the chamber on the course of the economic survey and we kind of took the kind of line of well let’s kind of try and scoop this into one place and what does that tell us and one of the biggest challenges was around the businesses were telling us was around Workforce challenges and sort of when we looked at that we were like well actually right we’ve got to start thinking about how do we kind of a keep the things that we are doing but B look at how we change our Tack and therefore this session’s about looking at what we are doing and getting some feedback from you um so where are we today currently there’s a quite a low level of unemployment we obviously saw a spike during covid and after covid but that has come back down however as Robin alluded although youth unemployment is the sort of area that we are looking at because that’s the bit that hasn’t come down as fast as perhaps the the kind of claim count level wider and we know that one in three in the workforce are over 50 which kind of makes people go oh you know hang on a minute and that means we have to kind of look inspiring our younger generation to live grow up and work work in westers job vacancies so after we came out of the pandemic there was the big resignation people kind of reviewed what they were doing and we saw vacancies in westshire go to about 10,000 um and businesses were coming to us saying how’ you help me what am I doing and they were doing the same things that they were doing perhaps prior to uh the pandemic where it was get an advert ready get it online and hoping that a list of candidates would come through the door and we kind of know what didn’t happen but we’ve seen that Peak go away also demand and Supply we’re always trying to balance the kind of skills piece with the demand from businesses and how does that work with our training providers uh how does it work in terms of those people who are looking for work and how do we kind of fill those vacancies and trying to get that right and I know um because we kind of also track the chamber courtly economic survey where that figure of um you know is it difficult to recruit we’ve actually seen that Peak and come down as well but it’s still high it’s still at 50% so wer no different than many sh counties very few big employers a sort of triangle that bottoms out with lots of small micro businesses doing great work which also means their time and capacity to kind of engage and and perhaps think you know certainly 2035 gets really hard so we have to work and engage with our businesses to kind of engage them and getting them to think differently um also when we then look kind of at that young people coming through the system in year seven which US going to tell me how old that would be because you’re age eight age eight so we’ve got an extra thousand young people in age 11 age 11 I got my son’s the wrong way around well we’ll edit that bit out so we’ve got an extra thousand young people coming through the system therefore if we don’t get the system right now in terms of giving them careers opportunities and actually where they can work in wer they’re going to do and they’re going to move outside the county and they’re not going to come back so we’ve really got to work hard now on the careers and the schools piece to actually get that right for five years hence um and currently there’s a 28% disability employment gap which is if you got a decare disability you’re less likely to be in work and actually when we think about that we then say well there’s a there’s a whole pool of talent there that employers currently are not tapping and we really need to work harder in terms of our inclusivity and we say well how are we going to do that and and I think that’s one of the things that we’re kind of hoping to give you a few ideas but we also want your feedback on and then we’re starting to see that kind of skills need change you know nearly every sector comes back and talks to us about the digital skills of the workforce and every sector is starting to talk to us about the sustainability in the green agenda and how they’re moving business and it’s their customer base that’s driving that and equally how people are Skilling up so our Focus has always been on young people it’s been around the Business Schools convers ation and that cohort um because if I had a pound for every time an employer went H the young people today oh they’re never ready for the world of work oh young people they just got different mindset they got different values and I and I always think H I wonder if the generation before that was saying that and the generation before that and they probably say about my generation so you kind of think hang on a minute this can’t be this can’t be right we’ve got to invest in those young people to to stop them even if they are going to leave to University that they can see a career path back in the county we’ve got an aging Workforce if we let and just let the market run we can see the challenge we’re going to have in terms of Recruitment and people and it’s not like there’s a huge pool of unemployment out there that we can bring in so we’ve got to think about and we’ve got to encourage businesses to kind of think about how are they going to do that it’s me it’s me I didn’t fall up the stairs so I’ve done better than last time um but I did obviously mess up the age so apologies for that when we started looking at the young people agenda um one of the we we were looking at how do we encourage young people to remain here in the county how do we point out to them the opportunities that we have in our employers and the industries that we have here in werer and in 2018 the DFE published the department for Education published some very Stark data on my notes it says cold and wet data but I’m not going to say that um Stark data and that said that in terms of our careers education and our levels of employer engagement in education we’re in the bottom three of all areas and this is an issue it’s not just an issue because actually our young people know very little about our employers here in the county and therefore aren’t likely to choose our Industries and our employers but also what we know is that if a young person has four or more encounters with an employer over the lifetime of their schooling it reduces their chance of not being in education not being in employment later in life by 86% so not having that engagement is clearly an issue well also during the pandemic youth unemployment in Wester Rose quite dramatically to levels of 99.4% which obviously in itself is a concern there are a number of reasons for this not least that we were all so busy trying to run our businesses and manage the covid pandemic that naturally perhaps recruiting young people into our business wasn’t our priority um we also saw a number of issues in terms of the advice and guidance that young people were able to access during that period And also the support from Job Center plus Etc so this meant that we had these high levels of youth unemployment which I’m glad to say have started to come down but we did have some of our most deprived Wards reaching unseen levels in most a share of 12% so just going to talk you through a couple of the programs that the LEP has been running over the last five years um so the first one particularly is our careers and Enterprise company program that we call inspiring worcesters shers so I’m sure that many of you will know about this program it’s a program that we run with the department for education and it’s all about improving the quality of careers education within our schools within our educational establish lishments so we work with every school so 62 educational establishments every school every further education College every special educational needs school as well to support them to improve the careers planning that they have within their environment um but more than that it’s actually about as Paul said it’s about Worcester share it’s about ensuring that those young people are getting engagement from Wester sheare employers they’re getting messages about the industries of Wester sheers and the industry of wera and the employment opportunities within worcesters share I mean this is no mean feat um in that cohort every year you have 40,000 young people so we need to be influencing them as much as possible and continuing that work um oh sorry um alongside that we run our Worster share apprenticeships brand so Wester share apprenticeships started out very much as a helpl line to support young people to access apprenticeships and to understand more information about apprenti ship we started that brand with that helpline 10 years ago and actually now that’s a comprehensive program of events but also positive engagement directly through schools last year we spoke to 20,000 young people and talked to them about the opportunities that apprenticeships can provide we also during the pandemic started our career Worster share brand careers Worster share is aimed to support 16 to 24 year olds who are seeking work or who need help and advice they might be College they might be in school but they need some support to move to their next phase um this brand started off pretty much as a helpl line again we knew that during the pandemic schools actually weren’t able to provide a lot of that careers advice didn’t have that access so again we started this support help line to be able to help them this has evolved dramatically so we now work with uh the department for work and pensions here in Worcester we have a youth Hub and our youth Hub continues to keep those numbers as Robin said they are lower than the average because of that work that’s going on that intensive piece and that program is due to expand so in April this year working with the district councils we will be expanding that program to every District in Worcester share with fixed drop in points not just in Worcester but also in redit where youth unemployment unfortunately at the moment is growing and hopefully we’ll be moving that into kidderminster soon so I’m going to bring all of these up where are we now so simply as I’ve said already youth unemployment is being held to lower levels which is really positive um there are some increases and there are some areas there’s always more work to be done on this and we do need to continue to do that but I think the real positive messages are that in in our careers program we’ve gone from the very bottom from being in the bottom three to the top three and actually as a LEP we are known as a LEP that has traveled the most distance we are consistently in the top three in the country in terms of performance on that program we have a significant number of employers working with us always need more but we have a significant number of employers working with us who are supporting that agenda and as it says 92% of students last year received employer encounters from who are in year seven to year year seven year seven to year 13 I was just checking that um but also uh 80% of students were relevant received work experience and again that’s really positive that’s something we will always look to build upon we want to that that to be better the challenge in this is actually that it’s not the same people you can’t build it and walk away you’ve got to keep the momentum going so we’ve got to keep those messages going into our educational establishments we’ve got to keep employers working with them uh alongside that we have a few developments in that area as well so we are actually the government’s agenda is to move down into primary that’s not yet on the list for Worcester share but we’ve started started that already so we do deliver a competition called the primary stem challenge it’s a little photo of it here um and our primary stem challenge competition we deliver to years four and five um years eight so age eight and nine um and that primary stem competition is about pointing out stem skills to young people so science technology engineering math skills around a local challenge this year we’re doing it around uh moving a bridge over the road as they did on the bypass around Worcester um but we’ve always done it about local challenges so it’s reinforced uh when we first did this five years ago we had 10 schools in Worcester that took part this year so far we have 85 so again really positive piece of work um we continue our events program so we continue to celebrate the success of our apprenti shps for instance but we also continue our skill show program which Robin mentioned so in March this year we will have a two-day event um at uh sixways and that currently has about three and a half thousand students from the county booked to attend to visit employers and to talk about their next steps so we’ve given you some stats facts and from the evidence base um we’ve given you some of the work that we’re doing but I suppose it’d be good now to get a feel for what businesses need to consider in the current climate and whether Laura H may be able to give us a view from the sort of recruitment side stand up if you canm yes higher than they were still a really competive Market three things that candidates are looking for and employ looking for pay benefits so that’s the first thing that’s to be right and we [Music] haveit your internal as well as lose people second is life balance people people back in the office just making FR people want to be from home are fible kind cultural shft managing working hours out managing output um so that’s I think a really great positive is really attractive and the final thing is really focusing on your culture and your purpose of the business so being values L that sustainability thank you Lauren that was great um and probably a view from right from the back uh Nick I know you’re in the same sector what what do you think in terms of uh that business climate point the emplo really important attraction’s really important what you talked about earlier about when you said I’m sure our generation said exactly the same thing they did so let’s find out what these uh what the youngsters want let’s find out what what they’re attracted to but more importantly you’ve got to be able to articulate your employee value proposition what’s your culture what’s your business what does it mean to work in your in your organization second thing is you you’ve really got to then build on your employer brand you know what’s the perception of your brand with youngsters what’s your perception of your brand with in comparison to your competitors if you can’t articulate that then how you going to attract people and I think the last thing Jud Judy said we we’ve all got like a a massive um responsibility to engage with these youngsters who how many people are Enterprise advisers in your organizations how many times you’re giving people work experience in your business you know people are coming to University then they’re going to other cities we need to keep a hold of this Talent or when people are going to other universities they’re from Worcester we need to bring them back to Worcester so instead of moaning about it we need to kind of work if you cannot if you can’t articulate your employee value proposition if you can’t articulate your employer brand you’ve got a genuine um challenge with attraction and that’s the that’s the first thing you need to do and then the sectors as well you know so it’s Tech AI stem they’re they kind of attractive sectors you’ve got to make sure some of the manufacturing isn’t attractive to some of the youngsters anymore so you got to make those attractive you got to find out how you can make them attractive and you can bring those people in instead of moaning about it every five minutes frankly so engaging with people like you engag people like B to Williams find out how to attract those people thank you I can stay for another 10 minutes if you want timing uh so thank you for those two views that was really helpful we’re now going to really test the slido because it’s about time we did isn’t it really so um using your slido app that you kind of logged into you’re now thinking oh my God how does this work again uh but so I’ll give it a bit of time but we’ve got a question for you around what do you think is the biggest skills need that you have in your business now yeah I am holding my breath hoping this works see if the technology Works obviously if you’re online that that question and the SL has come up on your screen oh bit of movement Darren will be happy so what we got there is the digital skills clearly coming uh strongly through that leadership management going up and sort of down but again the leadership of the business community and how that works others and I suspect that that is the kind of technical skill piece that um we’re that’s being identified there the real specialism in that sector um and then you start to see some of the other functions so those are the skills needs now will perhaps come back to that around how we think so what you’re probably also thinking is well where’s the strategy and where’s the plan missed a question oh oops so there is a strategy So within skills we’ve always had a strategy within the local Enterprise partnership so we had our own strategy in 20021 that we reformatted in 22 called the local skills report but more recently we’ve worked with the Chamber of Commerce and the department for education to look at the local skills Improvement plan so this was started in 2022 and last year the chamber working with the growth Hub consulted with over 450 wer share employers we have Rob here so I’m hoping someone’s going to whiz him over a mic and he’s going to tell us about the progress thank you thank you rob do you want to go back yeah let go so on that note that leads very nicely into my next slido question which oh it’s not working it’s not work oh there we go um so in the room tell me how many of you in the room and online tell me how many of you actually have a Workforce plan oh it’s a it’s nearly a brexit [Laughter] split hoping yes would be 57% to be [Laughter] honest okay so you can you can see that even in in the room and those online we’ve really got a split about those people who are really planning for their Workforce taking that either that 50 plus or that young person inspiration piece and and really thinking about it 50% on there and I would probably say you guys are really engaged in some of this stuff and probably have known what we were talking about um the businesses out there who are kind of don’t know I suspect that number of haven’t got a Workforce plan will be least 8020 um and that really then gives us a challenge but the other bit we’re really Keen to know so the next question for you on that poll oh technology when was it last refreshed so of those of you that have a plan when did you last refresh it well again that’s settling settling there probably good to see that a number of our employers are are kind of thinking about that and maybe that’s because of where we are in the cycle people are starting to think actually now the pandemic piece has kind of settled right okay now we need to think about that obviously there’s that 50% who haven’t got a plan so um that sort of hasn’t been refresh don’t know you can see that piece others going further back and I suppose this thing comes back to to how hard is this to to kind of keep on top of and I suppose there’s the challenge that we uh recognize so in terms of workforce planning for those of you that don’t know exactly what it is the ched Institute Personnel development Define workforce planning as a core business process which aligns changing organizational needs with your people strategy so quite simply it’s a forward view it’s delivering you in your business the skills and the people you need when you need them if you don’t have a Workforce plan you are being incredibly reactive you are subject to what you find in the labor market you don’t have a plan essentially and you will find as Rob said a number of businesses that are in that position for all the reasons that Rob mentioned they are really challenging to write it’s really hard to think forward and to think actually what am I going to need when I’m going to need it no not necessarily uh being 100% with what the technological advances will be and there for what skills that might require me to have they need a lot of time they need a lot of thought and again a lot of small businesses in Wester so actually they don’t have that time and they probably aren’t thinking that far forward and there always as I’ve said had a lot of unknowns in this process but there are also a lot of knowns you know things about your business we’ve told you today one in three people in W’s labor market is over 50 you have a number of those people in your Workforce and actually so what you know about that person is that they will retire so what are you doing to plan for that retirement a number of our businesses successfully use apprentiship as a method to kind of fill that void to continue to benefit from understanding that knowledge and those skills that that person has by passing them on through an apprenticeship scheme to an apprentice so one such employer that does that really well in our county is uh uses apprenticeships very well as a succession tool is Southco manufacturing and we spent some time last year with Southco uh so let’s hear from them oh I missed that slide well we’re celebrating 14 years it’s important for many reasons it emphasizes the strength in the organization the ability to be so diverse cover a wide range of markets Southco really got on board with the apprenti ships scheme when we started the reason apprenti ships are so important is it really helps people understand the culture in the company and culture is really important to us when people come in early at the friendship level they can really sense that and when they then progress through the organization they can really carry that forward and I think that’s why it’s so important to have apprentices in the company in terms of South Coast future Workforce apprenticeships are a big part of our strategy the talent Market out there right now is very very tight don’t have huge amounts of um candidates that are out there at the moment that are just queuing up to want our jobs that’s why apprenticeships are a vital part of our strategy I think it’s vital that you can take young people in an early age and really show them how what that career path is that they want you know I’ve met many over the time as an Enterprise advisor that don’t really know what they want to do that’s tough it’s 16 you don’t know what you want to do and I think an apprenticeship is such a fantastic route to really help you make that decision having those young people with us you know you can grow them into your own culture you can grow them into learning and understanding the business and therefore I think that loyalty then remains in terms of staying with the organization as well further on many many of our apprentices just like myself have been here for for some time because they’ve continued with the organization because they’ve continued to develop and found that role that’s right for them I used to be the young person in the organization 28 years ago now I’ve been in the company we need young people coming through to bring fresh ideas to challenge us and we need those people to bring that energy that drive that passion enthusiasm they’ll get a lot from from those people that have been in the company a long time but they will also bring a lot a big thank you to South K I I feel that when I sold the video to Emma who sat at the front of the room I suggested to her it would only ever be shown once um so I probably owe her quite a lot of chocolate at this point um but as we have Emma here today so Emma can you tell us you know what are the benefits to Southco of the apprenticeship program microphone um for Southco as you probably saw on the video there we are a manufacturing engineering company so you know manufacturing is always tough to saly young people it’s not that sexy exciting job that when you’re 16 you think oh I want to be a tool maker most of them don’t even know what toour makers are and for us you know recruiting those more what I’d call traditional positions your tool makers your maintenance Engineers your manufacturing Engineers has always been a lot tougher for us as as we move further you know back 25 years ago it was nowhere near as difficult as it is today so we have always as part of our workforce planning had apprentices is is top priority for us it’s a vital part of our succession it’s a vital part of you know the how we recruit so we have now apprentices not just within the factory roles we now have apprentices throughout the business so we have apprentices within our finance team within our it team um within our customer service team and that’s especially vital for us because we need languages and people don’t necessarily think languages engineering manufacturing but it’s a big part of our business as well so apprentices have really really helped us with that you didn’t get to see some of the apprentices talk on that the video is a little bit longer um but some of the apprentices do talk through their um their career in South K we’ve got one guy Matt he would have spoken there he’s been with us for nine years started as an apprentice done his degree apprenticeship as well now so they’ve been able to do that and we we we’re very proud of the fact that our turnover is very low and more than 80% of our apprentices stay with us and have been with us for many many years and it’s something that will continue to do because apprenticeships are so important to us thank you Emma um as you mentioned that I’m going to uh ask you to pass the mic to Kira so Kira um Murphy is from Foster facilities management and Kira actually won our Wester sheare apprenticeships higher Apprentice of the year last year so well done to [Applause] Kira she is a shining Beacon for apprenticeships but Kira can you tell us how has your apprenticeship affected you personally and actually what are the benefits to you of doing your apprenticeship um I think the benefits are massive I left school at 16 didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do um um I applied for an apprenticeship because I thought the university probably wasn’t the route didn’t want to go for a levels um eight years later I’m at the same company I’ve done General business um all the way through to my Human Resources degree equivalent um and yeah it’s really beneficial I’ve got the skills the knowledge and the experience and mality to the business the eight years I have no intention of leaving I think it’s brilliant and I’d love for more people to be passionate about it so yeah thank you very much which leads us on to our next question so your slido next question is around apprenticeships so do you use apprenticeships in your business um so I’m going to actually pick on Emily Hyde as well so Emily is here she’s from citizen Communications and she’s going to tell us a little bit about how they use them in their business we’ actually got two apprentices yeah so we’ve got two apprentices and there’s only 12 of us in the business two of which are actually apprentices they’re in our digital marketing department so obviously improving all those digital skills and everything like that Georgia one of them she just won the degree level apprenti Apprentice award at the same uh Awards evening so um yeah we’re we’re thrilled to have them on board and they’re really helpful of getting that experience in younger as well because obviously we we know that the the workforce is the age is growing and it is getting um because we’re obviously all working longer now as well and but having those younger people involved in the business is brilliant because all these digital skills are those sort of areas that that they know so much more about and they do it day in day out and they’ve grown our business so we now actually provide more social media support to this is so we’re a marketing agency we provide so so many more social media retainers to companies around the around the country to be honest with you so um yeah they’ve been brilliant in growing that service and it’s just going to get even better and better to be it’s given us another string to our bow and it’s it’s brilliant um so yeah thank you Emily clicking it’s not oh dear so this is definitely a slido question so if you have recruited in the last three months on a scale of 1 to five how did you find it one being very difficult and five being very easy oh still a bit of movement there so uh as you can see nearly back to nights side and it moved again uh so that that bottom end people are still finding it hard to recruit at 8% being really hard and and 30% there but sort of uh difficult in the middle is that thing and I suppose this does depend on role depends on lots of factors but nevertheless if businesses are finding it difficult to recruit and if we get into them the oh it was simple but I think it does really depend on that role and and again some of the things that Laura was picking up and Nick was picking up around if you’re out there as a business with your brand there is now something called glass door where you you can get those former employees or current employees kind of looking at your recruitment process and kind of communicating in a Trip Advisor kind of way so it is really important to think about back to those kind of workforce planning methods around how uh you communicate that and your opportunities as a business but you also need to explore new markets so we told you about the disability employment gap and we’ve been focused on this at the lap since earlier this earlier last year so so as Laura said it’s clear that at the moment recruitment is very challenging and what we are suggesting is that this is the time this is the time to consider being more inclusive in your recruitment I’m sure none of us in this room would say that we are deliberately not being inclusive however we are challenging you to be proactively inclusive we know there are a number of benefits from employing inclusive ly but also employing people who have health conditions um we know that this will give you access to a greater pool of candidates it’s not about widening a corridor as people seem to think it is actually often is a very small adjustment um there are proven from this group lower rates of absence in businesses but also Improvement in attendance generally across the business it improves overall staff morale because actually everyone in your business starts to look at the business slightly differently and the culture within the business slightly differently and it will improve your retention of Staff within your business as well we in the LA Define that inclusive employment as ensuring that everyone has a fair and equal opportunity for all candidates throughout the recruitment process but also throughout their employment some employers will absolutely see this as a bridge too far and we understand that but my challenge to you is that in the UK right now one in five people is diagnosed with some form of of neurod divergency so that means that people have autism ADHD dyscalculia dyslexia I’m very dis praxic I didn’t fall up the stairs though so that was good um we have them in our Workforce already that’s the message you have them you’re already making adjustments you possibly just don’t realize that you are um inclusive practices will also help you with your current staff where you have staff that are suddenly diagnosed or have a sudden onset of a health condition actually being more inclusive and understanding how you work better with this group will help you to return those people back to work but also to keep that talent in your business for as long as you possibly can it’s about focusing on what those individuals can do and not what they can’t so question on slido is on a scale of one to five one being we have no inclusive practices and five being we have a very structured approach toward W inclusive employment how inclusive do you feel that you are within your Workforce again it’s moving around so uh going give it a moment just to settle you can see there’s quite a spread um for those of you in the room Man online in terms of that I mean it’s good to see that probably above the natural average you know in terms of a four but I think also there is some work to do at that kind of bottom end and about you know if we’re back into that it’s difficult to recruit but also we’re when we’ve kind of got practices that again not deliberately but we’re excluding people or making people or thinking it’s going to be too difficult then those are some of the things we’ we’ve kind of got to get over and we’ve kind of got to work with both employers candidates training providers and young people themselves to kind of make this a kind of better picture than we’ve got now so we are asking you today to join the change and we are launching our new program inclusive wer share leaders so inclusive wiers leaders is designed to celebrate the 23% so when I find out who you all are I will be chasing you um but it’s about being beacons in inclusivity it’s about recognizing the great practice that you’re doing having this badge will support you in your recruitment practices because actually it is known that people with health conditions look for organizations that are proactively inclusive um and with that in mind we actually have our first two inclusive businesses in the room she hopes so um I’m going to ask the lovely Phil Newton who is from psse to come up and talk to us about about his inclusive Journey so Phil if you can tell us about your journey with Chris your head of data and give us a bit about your experience of that process of course yeah so um we’re a marketing agency we go for about 28 years um and the journey for this inclusivity sort of started for us about three years ago um we were having to diversify what we were doing as a business and offer a lot more services and skills to our clients um one of those skills was Data um we were lucky enough through the standard interview process to meet a guy called Chris who um stood out from day one just as personality very very capable of doing the the job um shortly after we offered him the position he shared that he’ just been diagnosed with atis autism and OCD um and was asking the question of do we still want to employ him um I found it a bit strange little bit of a strange question why are you asking that you you the right person for the job um Chris took us has taken us on a journey really now for the last three years um he’s brought something to the business that wouldn’t be there I think when I first mentioned him to Judy it was sort of I was saying his autism in OCD is actually a superpower for what we need it’s not a weakness um from an employer’s point of view the benefit and what we can offer to our clients and how quickly we’ve been a to wrap that channel up is huge um and the adjustments we have to make to cater for that are so so small um I would probably suggest smaller than what you would class as a normally employee um I don’t believe we’ve been going 208 years there’s no such thing as a normal employee everyone’s got different needs different requirements they’re comfortable doing certain things I’m not comfortable to up here that’s one of them um but we’re all comfortable we all want to do different stuff um so the adjustments with Chris it’s stuff like flexible working um challenges go face to face with clients so we just facilitate video calls uh um and really one of the things came out um it’s time with us time with us as the owners um to be able to have our ear and listen to what we’re doing and feel like he’s being heard and we’re making adjustments not just for him um he massively charitable so he’s sort of always pushing that agenda with us as well to make that happen but what we’ve seen from Chris his willingness and openness to talk about his own experience which is why I’m talking about it obviously wouldn’t if it was confidential um but his willingness to talk about that is opening wider conversations within the business so in the last three years we now we’re sort of we’re becoming so open as a business it’s almost walking into your house so someone’s feeling a little anxious one day they’re not sitting there trying to bottle it up or think about something else they’re sharing out with other people that’s becoming really really powerful um people with other needs or sort of you would classes slightly more diverse they’re seeking us out now to want to work with us and for me for our clients the more diverse we are as a business um the better service we’re given to our client the clients don’t want 20 of me I really really don’t what they want is 20 people completely different different viewpoints with different angles to be able to push that on and so I would say I’ve sort of fallen into this journey but it’s a journey I’m really really enjoying I think it’s really um it’s really great it’s lovely to be able to help someone like Chris fantastically loyal employee but every employee we bring on from now on and everyone who’s in the team already we’re really really pushing that on and growing that up so it’s I say as an employer please don’t be scared of it it’s not it’s no difference recruiting a standard person um just listen communicate be willing to change be willing to adapt um sharing with the team how that happens has been a big part of it so we haven’t got that you know why can he work from home and I can’t work from home and why is he got this and why is that happening wider communication of what’s going on and the team being willing to share as well as I suppose me being willing to share what goes on so um yeah but don’t be afraid of it thank you um we’d like to award you your certificate of recognition for your inclusive wiers share leaders [Applause] than okay uh back to probably one of the favorite questions that the skills team get which is around employers tell us that young people aren’t ready for work so we have to in there don’t we so uh come on in one being not very reflective and five being uh perfect inductees it might take a little right the T slide’s moving again just as I go to launch it moves all the time right okay um average score of three so I think people gone for the middle probably hearing our presentation they’ve kind of took a step back and gone oh yeah actually they young people today they’re not that bad so I could could approach one maybe got a lot of educ Educators in the room too yeah Judy three yeah I mean I don’t know if I agree to be honest do I think young people are prepared well for the world of work my answer for this is actually I think they are in the main I do I believe um having worked with further education and higher education and schools for many many years uh they do a significant amount to ensure that young people are ready for the world of work I think there is a bit of fault on both sides if I’m honest of course there’s always more that we can do in the education sector but I also think I would ask when was the last time you reviewed your induction process so there is a difference between an induction process that’s required for me coming into organization and a young person think about your first job think about the time when you started I remember mine very vividly I remember at 18 the first job I had I remember particularly some individuals within that company who went over and above to make sure that I settled well into that company and I think actually we as employers have lost elements of that so I’d ask you to dust off your induction process and have a real look at it I’m also going to ask uh cat Lewis who is the principal from kinster college who is at the back to just tell us a little bit about what they do at kinster with their NCG guarantee thank you Judy um and good morning everyone it’s really lovely to be here um I’m I’m actually quite heartened by those results because I was sat there kind of getting smaller and smaller thinking is everybody going to say that young people are really not ready for work when actually that is our Core Business um so kidster college is part of a large national college group NCG uh we’ve got uh seven colleges across um England um and within the work that we do um we do obviously have conversations with employers where we are talking about it’s a skills deficit for young people so what we’ve done within the NCG guarantee is pulled together um a comprehensive range of enhancement activities that sit both within and outside the main curriculum qualifications it it consists of five separate badges so we have an Enterprise badge an employability badge a community badge a digital literacy badge and also a mental Fitness badge um and that one that last one actually is really really important especially off the back of covid um because we know that young people do struggle to to develop the levels of resilience that they need so what we do within that is we track um activity um we ask young people to reflect on the knowledge skills and behavior that they’re developing and by the end of an academic year they are able to achieve a range of certificates that they can build a portfolio from and what that does it enables them to actually fully articulate what they’ve done at College their capabilities their potential value to employers um and also I think it’s really important to say that’s not the end of the journey you know I’d really like to congratulate um companies like Southco and fosters who are picking up the Batton at that point and continuing that journey of development for those young people um in making sure that they have everything that they need in order to be successful in the future thank you C thanks so um ksbs there’s always a three-letter acronym isn’t there uh just to keep us on our toes and equally uh surely there’s somebody in the room thinking oh that’s different in my sector um but the knowledge go on there Jude tell us the knowledge so the knowledge is the bit that you learn so the learning so what you learn in in college in school in University on a training course that’s the knowledge the skills are how you apply that knowledge so how do you apply that knowledge to your role and then the behaviors are the bit that sits around that that says yes I’ve got great digital skills but actually am I good at managing my time can I communicate am I resilient am I assertive that’s what the ksbs are and that’s a term you will hear in the education piece it’s certainly a term that the local skills Improvement plan is very focused on and what we’re proposing that we start to do over the next 6 to 12 months is really start to get employers to to start to think about those knowledge skills and behaviors um building on that local uh skills Improvement plan but also having that conversation about workforce planning so uh it’s another slido question but this is slightly different because I’m going to give you a bit longer because I want you perhaps the person sat next to you to kind of have a look at this these uh next kind of adaptations and and think about which are the top five and then what I want you to do your slid app once you’ve had that conversation for a minute or so is literally put your top five into the slid app so have a conversation with a person next to you what do you think okay okay how are we doing there a lot of I love to Passion right okay start to get your uh top five into the slido please okay right what are we seeing what are we seeing it’s back to that thing as soon as I start to go yeah oh no it’s moved um I think what’s really interesting for us is you can see that all of those characteristics are really important but you know those top five of positive attitude work ethic initiative teamwork and integrity those are things that we really then need to work with our training providers and our schools and our education establishments to talk to our young people about actually how they demonstrate these because what we know is they’ve got all this stuff but they communicating it and certainly yeah you know when I think back I could never talk about you know that kind of well equally how have I worked as a team and yet there were loads of examples either in my school career equally in my early career that actually I had to communicate but communicating that I didn’t really understand perhaps an activity a Project based that I could never kind of put that into a work team scenario um and I think those are some of the things that we’re looking at in terms of how we communicate that and how we get employers to really emphasize some of those so whether those are really the top five I’m kind of up for debates really and I think that’s part of this conversation as we go forward is how do we instill those things in uh the people that you’re looking to employ and recruit so next steps with this we actually we’re going to do a bit of work with the alip um group in to kind of look at how they feel about the probably the top 10 that’s been selected today to come up with a kind of top so many um and we will present that as Employer standards we’re going to run a bit of a pilot so we’re going to go to one of our schools and um talk to their talk to their year 10s and uh see how they feel they map against these and then challenge that school to be able to look at how they improve those skills for those young people but also um we’re going to work with our Fe and H sector to reinforce those within their curriculum and um to ensure that young people can articulate following their courses what they’ve learned and how they match those standards um I’d also say as an employer now we’ve taught you about knowledge skills and behaviors you know this is part of your workforce planning so it’s very much something you could look at within your own Workforce as well if this is your top five do your Workforce have this and if they don’t what are you going to do about that can you upscale them we talked a lot today about workforce planning um and I feel getting this right in wers share is really key for us it’s key for us as educational establishments to be able to provide the skills that you need and the people that you need at the point that you need them so for that reason we are bringing out this year our work force planning diagnostic tool so keep an eye out for that it will be out very soon and we’ll make sure that you all have information on how you can use that so and then we need your help um it’s very easy for us to either stand at the front or the team to engage the businesses but actually we need you guys to come to us in a sense and help us um we are always looking for um employers whether that’s you as the manager owner or equally part of your team I always say I should never be in front of a kind of school group because let’s be honest gray middle-aged man probably not a great kind of piece so our our apprentices and how they kind of uh communicate to those young people is definitely a better way than than me so um we’re looking at how you can pledge your support we want you to become an inclusive leader and I’m sure the the example that we gave you uh will inspire certainly inspired me to think about what we’re doing uh even as they our own organization to how we’re recruiting and I’m sure you’ve taken that away um the workforce needs listen out for the growth Hub who are coming on the third session as to how they can help you with that workforce planning and the opportunities that are there and then uh that that sort of workforce planning diagnostic is the bit of the conversation that we want next with the business community so on your tables you will have your pledge cards but I’m also going to uh raise Matt and Alysia who stood at the back of the room so if you wish to have a conversation about working in educational establishments uh workforce planning or being an inclusive employer they’ll be delighted as well I to keep that conversation going thank you very much for your time thank you