Skills Challenges

Does your workforce have the right skills to take your organisation in the right direction?

Skills challenges – the needs Currently and quite rightly ‘Skills’ within the workplace is high on the government agenda. As we speak funds are filtering down into regional ‘pots’ that have been allocated to support the up-skilling of the nation’s workforce. David Lammy, Skills Minister commented in last month’s edition of the Yorkshire Insider, ‘Yorkshire and Humber has the highest proportion of low skilled workers in the country because its traditional manufacturing industry could rely on low skilled workers.’

At our last seminar ‘The 12 days of Business and New Year Solutions’ we had the chance to ask a range of prominent organisations from the region about their skills needs. Our research did not pick up on the need to necessarily up skill ‘low skilled’ workers but the findings centred upon the need to constantly improve employees generic business skills and their ‘softer (people) skills’. The main business skills included: Leadership and Motivation, Appraisal systems and Customer Retention and Sales. The softer skills included Time Management and Team Working.

Skills challenges – the fight back

The European funded Train To Gain programme, organised by the Learning and Skills Councils (LSC) is just one of the major projects currently happening nation wide. The project aims to ensure that both training and skills advice is much more responsive to the needs of businesses. Organisations can access free and impartial advice with regards to staff training needs and depending on eligibility can take advantage of funded training. QED Consulting is one of the Skills Brokers acting on behalf of the LSC and Business Link, so of you would like further information about this please contact us.

QED Consulting invests fully in the development of both staff and clients, our recognition by Doncaster Chamber at the business awards over the past three years may go a little way to supporting this claim! In order to address the skills gaps and training needs of our clients we offer support through a range of tools from Workshops to Coaching. One of our services ‘Strategy Development and Implementation’ (a 2 day facilitated workshop) has proved essential to clients in terms of helping them to produce realistic and achievable strategies that are fully resourced by the right staff with the right skills.

The development of a training plan is integral to the Strategy Implementation workshop, as it highlights an organisations existing skills base and identifies remaining training and skills needs. If you would like further information about our Strategy Development and Implementation workshop please contact Mark Ellis on 01302 761222 or email mark@qedconsulting.co.uk.

The outlook is good

Despite a seemingly bleak outlook during a cold dreary January, skills levels across Yorkshire and the nation are reported to be improving and through working together we can ensure that our organisations are equipped with the skills in order to be increasingly successful in 2008. To find out more about working with us or for further information about QED Consulting please contact Rebecca Hughes on 01302 762111 or email rebecca@qedconsulting.co.uk.