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Train to gain

 

Employers today are being asked to help their employees improve their skills; as progress is slow they might be forced to do so in two years’ time.

 

The ‘Skills for Life Strategy’ has piloted programmes such as Train to Gain in 2006 addressing employers. It provides impartial advice on training to businesses across England . Employers are made aware that employees with the right skills can help improve productivity and competitiveness. So far 52,000 employers have developed training programmes, investing themselves £39 billion yearly.

Smaller businesses which cannot afford their own programmes should at least give staff time off to improve their basic skills. That is the message of a further campaign, launched last year by Sir Digby Jones, Minister for Trade and Investment.

“For small businesses this is just not possible due to the costs involved; either a certain job is just not done that day, or they have to employ someone to cover them,” says Samantha Ambridge, Skills Education & Training Services Co-ordinator at Dorset Business.

However, action has to be taken considering a survey by Learndirect which revealed in 2007 that still over £800 million are lost each year due to inadequate basic skills. Plus half of the workers feel their basic skills let them down. Many for example admit that they do not know the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’. Two more studies (by business school Insead and by Demos Think Tank) showed that Britain is performing poorly against international comparisons of innovation, research and development. The UK was placed behind Tunisia, which ranked 15 among the OECD countries.

The Lord Leitch report, which examined the UK's long-term skills need and was published in 2006, reached the same conclusions. Lord Leitch recommended: more funding, to raise people’s awareness of the value of skills, to create a universal adult careers service, and the introduction of compulsory education or workplace training up to age 18.

The benefit could be £80 billion over 30 years. Lord Leitch emphasised: “Our people are our natural resource. Skills are the key to unlocking their untapped and vast potential. The prize will be enormous – higher productivity, the creation of wealth and social justice.”

Unions welcome new law

At the same time the government warned that skills and training are becoming increasingly important for the survival of UK businesses. In fact, Treasury research has shown that within a decade there will be very few unskilled jobs as new technologies continue to emerge and the economy becomes increasingly global. Consequently it has put a new UK Commission for Employment and Skills in charge of coordination of the policies on employment and skills. And it has announced in spring that it will be introducing a new legal right for employees to request training time from their employer. Businesses are given until 2010 – and then they are forced by law to do as the government wishes.

The unions are with the government, and they welcome that the new legislation will be modelled on the existing right of employees to request flexible working time. The Trade Unions Congress (TUC) says in a press release that this “could help millions improve their skills and boost productivity”. The TUC itself has developed ‘Unionlearn’, an initiative promoting lifelong learning.

The response of Samantha Ambridge is probably representative for the country’s companies: “If the government is serious about this, they need to offer suitable compensation to allow smaller businesses to do this.”