A matter of course

Clutter and confusion, says the EEF's Martin Temple. No more shuffling of the deckchairs within a dysfunctional system, warns CBI director general Richard Lambert. Complex, labyrinthine, duplication-prone and with a low ROI, Britain's sprawling training support structure resembles a maze of signposts in a Kafka hall of mirrors. A recent report from entrepreneur Douglas Richard put some statistics to what he calls a business support system "out of control" - 3,000 individual schemes delivered by 2,000 agencies at a cost of more than £2.5bn a year. Prove your worth or be shut down, says Richard. And two years after a critical EEF study, the publication of the Leitch Report, and a "flurry of consultations and publications, in terms of complexity, very little has changed," says the EEF's education & skills policy adviser Andrew Smith. Emma Mulligan, head of business development at the National Skills Academy for Manufacturing, concurs. "Go to Google and type in 'lean training' for example, and you'll pull thousands and thousands of things out. But have you time to review all that, and how do you know that what you are getting is going to be good?" Eighteen months into its existence, the employer-driven National Skills Academy for Manufacturing (NSAM) is charged with creating demand-led training and education programmes and national standards for delivery. The cynical and wary may discount the NSAM as another acronym tossed into the alphabet soup of industry support agencies. But together with Semta and latest entrant Train to Gain, it offers the manufacturer the best and shortest cut through the maze. "It's not about training for training's sake," says Mulligan. "There must be real cash outcome not wooden dollars. All of the Academy approach is about getting a return on employer investment. The brand has been designed to be the mark of excellence, the beacon of security for training, diagnostics; anything relating to skills." How does she respond to those like Andrew Smith who say the Skills Academy has yet to make itself felt on the ground? "I think we are starting to make an impact, but it's in pockets, and the challenge for us now is to take those pockets and extend them out into the wider community." The Tanfield Group based in Tyne & Wear, producing zero-emission commercial electric vehicles and aerial work platforms, is one example. "In their words, we helped them achieve a 1,000% increase in productivity," says Mulligan. "We have also worked with Land Rover and helped them design a module and programme for their leadership and management programme - always a bit of a challenge. And they told us it is the best module and programme they have ever had." Group Lotus is another success pocket. Celebrated for the design and production of world-class niche sports cars and an engineering and consultancy expertise servicing the global auto industry, Group Lotus believes world-class performance is inseparable from its Hethel, Norfolk, employees having the opportunities to realise their potential and capabilities. The NSAM, City College Norwich, and the Learning and Skills Council have had significant enabling roles. And the company has been able to create its own team of Skills Academy-qualified trainers to deliver NVQ Business Improvement Techniques (B-IT) Levels 2 and 3. Lotus's training initiative stems from the work of its continuous improvement and manufacturing business coordination manager, John Vigar, who, together with John Bradley, regional manager for the East of England at NSAM, convinced all parties this was a win/win situation. Vigar's role is to help bring positive change through the continuous improvement philosophy. This includes developing employees to apply best practices in their job roles, maintain process control systems and applying standardised work ethics. And Vigar believes this vision could be the pinnacle for Group Lotus's training ambitions. "With an emphasis on continuing to maintain the very high standards of the National Skills Academy for Manufacturing and with continued support from our other partners, together, we could become the 'Ox-bridge' centre for focused employee training in engineering and manufacturing, known and respected throughout the world." Train to Gain is designed to help businesses of all types and sizes get the training they need to succeed. Managed by the Learning & Skills Council across England, it has been developed from the highly successful Employer Training Pilots and uses experienced skills brokers who will work closely with individual businesses to identify the skills the business needs; pinpoint the right training; agree a tailored training package; find available funding; and review progress. "As a model, we like Train to Gain," says EEF's Andrew Smith. "We like the brokerage-led aspect of it. But in terms of getting companies engaged there have been problems which have been admitted, the main one being a lack of understanding among companies about what the Train to Gain offer is. "When one of my colleagues put this to an official, he replied, 'Haven't they read the Train to Gain expansion plan?' Well this is a 75-page document and businesses are not going to read this type of publication." Train to Gain has recently lined up £65m of government money via Semta, with companies employing less than 250 the main beneficiaries. Semta advisors will help identify their business needs, improve skills, set improvement targets and measure the impact. Unlike larger companies, they will also be eligible for grants to develop management and leadership. As Train to Gain rolls out, another promising initiative opens next month - MySkillsAcademy. This is a web portal system designed for SMEs linking learners or employees with employers and training providers. "It's a big area of development for us and it's going to make a huge difference," says Emma Mulligan. "An employer can analyse which skills he needs, and against that manage the skills process. It's a very, very powerful tool. And all our training being developed is with SMEs in mind as well, so it's bite-sized chunks, work-based learning, not 'you must spend 26 weeks in a college' or anything like that." For Paul Denning, MD of Barton Cold Form, Droitwich, Britain's training and skills issue - costing England £700m a year according to Semta - is rooted in a schools culture unsympathetic to manufacturing. "You go into schools and there's very rarely any engineering practised any more. Even if you go into the heart of industry, which was Coventry I guess, very few schools have so much as a simple lathe or milling machine. So the children don't see anything on engineering until they leave school, and by then it's too late. "How we overcame this is by taking on young people and having our own apprenticeship scheme. We have introduced Worcester College of Technology to the company and have a computer training room, simulation for engineering and everything else, and in addition we send people to training schools. We are very pro-active." His advice for SMEs? "Go directly to the local colleges: find the better ones - those with the skills you need. And I would keep away from a lot of the other organisations that have been set up on a whim." Denning is scathing about the uneven quality and delivery found across the private consultancy sector. "To be blunt, the whole system is absolutely obscene, with more people becoming consultants funded by government, and a lot of the courses run being very poor. "Having said that, you have to understand the system, and there are certain organisations which are extremely good. We've just had one guy trained up as a Six Sigma engineer and that has gone extremely well. But you have to be in the know to find out which are the good ones and which are the bad." Emma Mulligan says the Skills Academy is addressing the variable quality criticism. "There are three parts to our approval standard: the content of the training material, the process of delivery - how you prepare people and follow up post-training to ensure sustainability - and, thirdly, how you deliver it. The person who delivers the training is critical to all of this and it doesn't matter whether they are a trainer, an assessor, or a consultant. A very large programme we have been working on is upskilling trainers and assessors for Business Improvement Techniques." Mulligan's advice to a company looking for the surest route through the training maze is to call Semta and request a business skills diagnostic - in essence, what skills are going to make a difference to your business. "Following this, they can then have access to the £65m which has funding for things never available before. They can have Level 2 and Level 3 training for Business Improvement Techniques, or £1,500 grants for leadership and management - which doesn't have to be a qualification. It can be anything that's right for them as a business." Semta's director of policy Lynn Tomkins says: "We can look at mapping your business objectives and skills decisions to ensure you are training the right person for the right skill at the right time. It's focusing on 'what are you trying to achieve in the business? Are you reducing waste, are you increasing your products' market share?' "And then we are able independently to review which departments would be involved in this, what skills are needed to achieve success. And we place a measure of success, so we can go back and evaluate whether your investment in skills has actually delivered improved business performance." Mulligan admits that like much else across the training landscape, funding issues are "very complex. We are lobbying the government very hard to make it much simpler." The upcoming MySkillsAcademy portal should help, with a designated funding section "making it very simple for enquirers to understand what it will cost their business, what they can get funding for, and take a lot of the hoop-jumping out of it." But while funding availability varies between England, Wales and Scotland, and across the nine English regions, Lynn Tomkins says Semta's regional sector leads will advise companies to ensure they are taking advantage of all that is on offer. So, in a terrain of often confusing and circular routes and byways, Tomkins says this is the motorway through the maze: "Ring the Semta customer service number. "The person on your patch will come out and talk to you, take you through all your options and the support available, help you produce a plan, source the funding and link you to the Skills Academy so that a good quality provider delivers the training."