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Martyn Sloman

By Martyn Sloman (January 2008 Issue)
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Skills, it seems, are now an important political issue. A new prime minister, new departmental ministers and a new policy framework in place, built around the Leitch Report, all mean a higher profile and a desire for action. The message is ‘time for a fresh start’, and an expectation that the people-management and development professional will roll up his or her sleeves and get on with the practical implementation.

Unfortunately, the reaction from the profession will be more like a weary sigh of ‘here we go again’. Like it or not, perceptions are reality and any progress must be based on an understanding of what has caused this cynicism and the steps needed to get the human resource and training managers on board.

The brutal truth is that, certainly since I have been involved in training, the government has not achieved the sort of credibility it needs to enthuse the practitioner. We have seen initiatives and institutions come and go and some have been disastrous. The booby prize must go to the UK e-University. This initiative, originally introduced in 2003, was designed to allow British universities to offer courses to overseas students through e-learning.

Neither the universities, nor the overseas learners wanted the initiative; it was finally wound up after spending an estimated £50m of public money and became the subject of a special investigation by the select committee on education.

The moral of the UK e-University story is simple and extends across the whole skills agenda; demand is what matters. Supply-side initiatives, however well intentioned, will only get support if the business organisation and ultimately, the consumer, want them.

The good news is that this message is fully embedded in the Leitch Report. If it penetrates across government, it will be possible to forge a shared forward agenda for workplace skills in Britain.

My job at the CIPD involves the preparation of good practice case studies. One of the best examples is a precision engineering company called Ina Bearings, a subsidiary of the German owned Schaeffler group. The company employs 270 people manufacturing automotive parts just outside Llanelli.

Growing international competition, including the purchase by the parent group of factories in Romania and Slovakia, led to a recognition that the firm could not compete through costs. It needed to offer higher-quality products and become the production facility of choice for the group.

This required an extensive and ongoing investment in workforce skills. The factory slogan adopted was ‘L>C’ – the rate of learning must be greater than the rate of change. The local college, Coleg Sir Gar, helped Ina Bearings become a learndirect centre, implement NVQs and introduce personal development plans for all staff.

And it worked. Ina Bearings is now the lead plant for tappet production (a key engineering component) throughout the world.

So why can’t this success be duplicated, and what can government do? The second question answers the first; there is only so much that government can do. Ina Bearings recognised that its critical business challenge could only be met through skills enhancement. It had inspired, indeed visionary leadership. It had an HR professional who was able to take advantage of the schemes available, and utilise the local college facilities.

However, the mechanisms are a means to an end. Quite simply, leaders in organisations either get it or they don’t. Unless they see enhanced skills as a key underpinning of organisational success, they will not put their energy behind such initiatives, and this sets the organisational tone.

So what does this tell us about government policy? First, government must recognise this underlying truth that skills policy should be demand-led and follow from organisational drivers. Secondly, that a hortatory approach (or ‘shout a little louder’) will not work. No amount of publicity campaigns or conferences will have any effect on people who do not see the basic links between skills and the business. Thirdly, it is possible to confuse the market through a multiplicity of initiatives that are constantly changing.

However, having got all this off our chests, the new approaches set out by Leitch seem to offer a fresh start. What is suggested is realistic, modest and recognises the underlying issues. Let’s try to suspend our understandable cynicism and hope it works.

Martyn Sloman is CIPD adviser in learning, training and development. From 1997-2000 he worked as director of management education and training for Ernst & Young. He is a visiting professor at Glasgow Caledonian and Kingston Universities. He can be contacted at m.sloman@cipd.co.uk

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