BusinessCloud joined forces with GM Business Growth Hub and key figures in the business and education sectors to discuss how Greater Manchester is responding to the skills shortage.
The discussion was held in the Manchester office of digital transformation specialist ANS Group.
Apprenticeship changed my life
Leulneh Zewdu is a 19-year-old apprentice solicitor at law firm Pinsent Masons. He said: “I cannot advocate for the apprenticeship route enough. The ability to gain hands-on experience and build a career and open yourself up to a wealth of opportunities from 18 is genuinely remarkable. It’s reassuring to sit around this table and see the perspective of employers across different sectors, across different sizes, and understand that you guys are genuinely taking the time and effort to consider how best to support apprentices and how to bring more of us in through the doors. The fact that you’re actively working to open more doors and improve our experiences as apprentices is fantastic and it’s really reassuring.”
Nobody is left behind
Ian Turner is the chief of people at UA92, which supports individuals from underrepresented areas into university. He said: “It’s really refreshing that there are so many options available to young people across Greater Manchester that essentially leaves nobody behind, whether you go down the academic route, T Level or down the apprentice route. What’s really clear as well is it drives long-term loyalty. We’ve got people going into senior roles. My encouragement is that employers give back. You’ll get it back in bucket loads.”
Force for good
Toria Walters is the chief people officer at ANS. She said: “I have learned a lot (from the discussion) about how much is open to employers that we certainly didn’t know about and I’m looking forward to exploring that. I think the diversity that is available for different people from different backgrounds is brilliant. There is a sense of commonality. We’re employers in the room that are really passionate about doing something. There’s lots of employers that aren’t because they don’t know how to so I’d the education piece is really important.”
Educate parents
Susanna Lawson is the co-founder of Circle of Trust and exited founder of OneFile. She said: “It goes back down to that education piece, right back to early doors in the schools, not just the children, not the careers advisors, but the parents as well. If the parents aren’t bought into all these different models of education, and what the best route is, when their kid does come back from school and says, ‘I’ve heard about a T Level’, why would they make that choice? Why would they encourage them to do that rather than just do the formal academic higher education route?”
Raising awareness of T Levels
Dawn Duggan is the head of programmes and initiatives at GM Business Growth Hub and is looking to get more Greater Manchester employers involved in offering T Level placements. She said: “It’s been really heartening to hear that so many employers in the room are already aware of T Levels and have T Level placements. That has been a big push from us recently to get employers aware. In some ways it’s been quite sad that there’s so many employers out there that haven’t heard about T Levels yet. My takeaway from today is just how much has already happened but how much further we need to go to get to that end goal.”
Embracing technology
SallyAnn Coleman, managing director of The Juice Academy, said: “There’s a real sense of community and collaboration in the room. I’ve met people today who I’ve never seen before, and yet they’ve all worked with Juice Academy. That sense of working together has really come across. Our approach to employers would be, tell us your problem, then we’ll give you options, not the other way around. Digital is massive. We’ve talked about AI a lot today. It’s not anything to be scared of – we have AI in all our programmes. What’s interesting today is everybody embracing the technology that’s out there.”
Help young people
Gavin Chadwick, of R&B Switchgear Group, said: “It’s so refreshing that all the people in this room have got that drive to help young talent and find pathways for these people to succeed in life, whether it be with AI, engineering, whatever it is, with all these different avenues that are available to them. It’s refreshing that everybody wants to drive and push the understanding and the learning out to businesses, colleges, parents, to enable proper choices to be made and the experience and knowledge to be available to these young people.”
Apprentices are banging down our door
Warren Young, learning and development officer at Whitecroft Lighting, said: “As a group, we’re all pushing for the same thing. There’s some cracking young people out there and we need to harness their skills they’ve got in the local area. Let’s push. I’m an advocate for Tameside, but let’s push Greater Manchester. Let’s show them how good we are and what skills we have out there. Linking in with colleges and schools is essential. As I said, we used to go looking for apprentices, now we’ve got people coming to us and I want them banging on our door.”
BusinessCloud joined forces with GM Business Growth Hub for a skills roundtable, hosted at ANS
Proud Mancunian
Sophie Hope is the acting principal of Greater Manchester Combined Authority. She said: “I’m a ridiculously proud Mancunian, I’m ridiculously proud of this city region. Sitting around this table makes me even more excited to be part of Greater Manchester and to be working alongside businesses that genuinely care. There’s a real will from the employers and partners around the table, who want to support young people and not just young people but everybody. The residents of Greater Manchester want to support their skills development and that’s really encouraging.”
Excited about T-Levels
Matt Carr is an owner/director of Bolton-based Carrs Pasties. He said: “I’ve learned that as a growing business in Greater Manchester, we do engage really well with the help that’s out there. We want to build a learning and development department at Carrs Pasties and build a Carrs Academy that is supported by the rest of the region, but it’s expensive and it’s difficult. However, it’s a necessary tool to raise productivity in a business and so every company should have it as a priority, but it’s often the last thing that you try and do.
“The help from the Growth Hub with the Essential Skills Programme recently has been a real boom for us, because it’s 100 courses that any employee of any age can go into and develop essential skills such as digital. I’m getting really excited today about T Levels. It looks like a really great opportunity for us to engage with young people again and that’s what we need. We need as many young people to come into our business.”
Tech skills are changing
Claire Foreman, director of Greater Manchester Institute of Technology, said: “My main conclusion from today is to work even harder at making sure that students have skills of adaptability and flexibility, because the technical skills that we equip them with today are probably not going to last that long for them, because technology is moving so quickly, so we need to give them that broader skill set.”
Apprenticeships are alternative to uni
Chris Buckley is the founder of Manchester-based digital experts Pixel Kicks. He said: “For me apprenticeships are a viable alternative to university. It definitely helped me to grow my business and then I was doing the same for many other businesses. A few of our team that decided apprenticeships was the route for them did it after doing a degree at university. It gives you a great career and a pathway to go into senior positions. It does give you direct industry experience as well, which, because things move so fast in digital can be so important. Our apprentices get to work on real client campaigns. You get a lot more experience. You’re not just reading and studying, you’re working on real campaigns for real businesses and you’re seeing your results out there.”
Greater education
Zac Williams is CEO of talent solutions platform Unseen Group. He said: “One thing that I think is key is that more education is needed, not just for the young people, but for those who support them, the support network, teachers, parents and the like. I think that falls on everyone’s shoulders, from a community point of view, especially from the business community within Greater Manchester.”
Reassuring
Keaton Wright joined privately-owned insurance broker Lockton as an apprentice four years ago. He said: “It’s reassuring to know what people are doing to help. I look when I applied nearly four years ago now, there weren’t many high quality apprenticeships. But I think the commitment that people in this room are making, everyone’s taking the right steps to change that.”