Getting ready for National Skills Academies employer engagement and innovation This presentation con

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Getting ready for National Skills Academies
employer engagement and innovation This
presentation contains both the slides used at the
workshop and the collective feedback of the
delegates

• SfBN Workshop facilitated by
• Laura Overton
• Paul Mudd

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SSCs represented at the event

• Delegates
• Richard Foxwell AssetSkills
• James Holyfield Automotive Skills
• John Holton Cogent
• Alison Tickell Creative and Cultural
  Industries
• Richard Dodd ECITB
• Judith O'connell e-skills UK
• Shaika Sheikh Government Skills
• Michael Smith Lantra
• Bill Adshead LCS
• Sarah Millet LSC
• Chris Cooper National School of Government
• Philip Raynsford People 1st
• David Harbourne People 1st/Consultant
• Terry Watts Proskills
• Roseanne Hayward ProSkills
• Neil Robinson ProSkills
• Lindsay Mennell Skillfast-uk
• Matthew Hickey Skills active

• Nina Lowe Skills for Health
• Ian Hetherington Skills for Logistics
• Anne Seaman SkillSmart
• Lindsay Gillespie SummitSkills
• Speakers/Faciliators
• Kath Jakubiak DfES
• David Combie DfES
• Michele Roberts LSC
• Scott Johnson Small Business Council
• Paul Mudd SSDA
• Laura Overton SfBN

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Welcome

• Objectives for today
• To provide a clear understanding of the
  expectations of the EOI process
• To create frameworks and checklists  to help
  prepare for successful bids
• To generate new ideas to help employers
  engagement with the NSA process

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What will the workshop provide?

• Good timing we will hit the breaks!
• Good ideas
• This is still new
• Need for creativity
• Focus on employers
• Focus on innovation
• Good interactions
• Synthesis of new ideas
• Develop your own takeaways
• use the next sheet to plan ideas

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Getting ready for NSAs - Employer engagement and
innovationTakeaways for
New ideas
People to talk to
Things to do
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What Opportunities could Skills Academies offer
employers? Feedback from workshop delegates

• Academy will provide relevance to employers
• Mirror employer demand
• Provide appropriately qualified workforce
• Skills delivery where and when it is wanted
• Consistency of qualification
• Cost effectiveness
• Identifies employer synergies
• Facilitates dialogue
• Reduces confusion in the market place

• Bridging regional issues
• consistency across spread of workforce
• transferable people
• simplification of process for trans regional
  employers mobile workforce
• Shares good local practice on national basis

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What are the potential barriers for employer
involvement? Feedback from workshop delegates

• Top 5 barriers for the group
• Oh no not another initiative ( fatigue/failure of
  past)
• Coming up with the Money you are asking me to
  put my hand in my pocket again
• I cant see the value how to add value
• This conflicts with what I am currently doing.
• Not relevant I need higher skills/ informal
  learning etc

What Opportunities could Skills Academies offer
employers?

• Other barriers identified
• Complexity of engaging with gov
• Selfishness why should I work to the collective
  good?
• Why invest in government vapourware?
• Not a commercial priority
• Communication difficulties language used
• What is the difference between an academy and an
  SSC?
• Short term planning academies are too long term

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Starting points

• Employer engagement the holy grail!
• NSA is looking to bring something new
• Learning from other disciplines to look at other
  approaches to engaging employers
• Marketing
• Sales
• A journey for employers, unlikely to contribute
  to a vague idea need engage them at each step
  of the journey
• The following is a model that may help structure
  thinking about planning for an NSA and the
  different levels of commitment that are needed
  from employer along the way

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Some thoughts from Sales Marketing

• Thinking like a marketer
• Research
• Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning
• The Marketing Mix
• Implementation
• Control
• Thinking like a sales person
• Attention
• create Interest
• develop Desire
• move them into Action

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Identify market opportunity (niche, current
provision, Value add)
Awareness
Create straw man model (tangible interpretation
of NSA for market)
Support in principal
Refine model (research/analysis/consultation)
Input
EMPLOYER ENGAGEMENT JOURNEY
Create expression of Interest (mid June)
Buy In
Business planning (October 06)
Ownership
Delivery (September 07)
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Where are we now?
EMPLOYER ENGAGEMENT JOURNEY
Awareness
Support in principal
Input
Buy In
Ownership
Most delegates on the day were at the awareness
or support in principle stages
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NSAs Baggage and Innovation
Identify niche market Who is our target
audience? What value do we want to bring?

• Identifying what is of Value lessons from Sales
• Its all about the questions
• Spin Selling
• Situation questions
• Problem questions
• Implication questions
• Needs payoff questions

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Adding value lessons from marketing

• 3 ways to deliver more value than competitors
• Charging lower price
• Help customer (employer) reduce their other
  costs
• Show total cost lower despite higher price
• Help customers reduce their other costs
• Add additional benefits
• Customisation
• Convenience
• Speed
• More/better service
• Support
• Great guarentees
• Useful tools
• Membership benefits programme

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Creating straw man Considerations
Identify niche market Who is our target
audience? What value do we want to bring?
Create straw man model What going to do? Where?
Who with? How going to do it?
Strawman building blocks needed in order to build
a tangible offering
What Skills What skills needed? Mechanisms for
providing skills? What new elements do we need
Eg products/quals?
Who Partners What partners role might they
play? What new partners Do we need to
make happen?
where delivery What current delivery
channels What new channels? How overlap with
Existing programmes
How Governance Funding models Brand -
wiifm Process
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Thinking about innovation NSAs are expected to
come up with innovative solutions we started
the ball rolling with this event by brainstorming
some of the barriers
Each table took one of the 5 main barriers and
considered In what ways could we overcome this
barrier? They were asked to present back 3
possible solutions 1 sensible suggestion 1
completely off the wall suggestion 1 suggestion
in between ! Their feedback is as follows
What are the potential barriers for employer
involvement?
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Ideas for overcoming employer barriers (Colour
coded sensible ideas, off the wall ideas and
some in between)

• Oh no not another initiative ( fatigue/failure of
  past)
• Get employers to acknowledge problem, your idea,
  this is different because employer led ,
  opportunity for you to change agenda
• All employers together blank paper locked room,
  total commitment is the key to the to the door
  dont let them out til they have signed up!
• Assume they have complete confidence in
  government long term plan, positive spin on
  past successes, prove it is a sustainable idea (
  5yrs)
• Coming up with the Money you are asking me to
  put my hand in my pocket again
• RDA/gov investment to create Matched funding
• Take money out of salaries for all staff up front
• Look towards the lottery or European funding
• I cant see the value in an NSA
• Academy goes beyond remit of SSC to do what
  employers want
• Give us a million we give you peerage, join up
  he, fe and school funding in a seamless way
• Continue employer influence through ssc cut out
  middle man employers control it yourself around
  area of productivity and levels

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Ideas for overcoming employer barriers (Colour
coded sensible ideas, off the wall ideas and
some in between)

• This conflicts with what I am currently doing (
  the group assumed that conflict was around the
  need to collaborate rather than employers work
  individually
• Try and sell through proffessional inst for HR
  mgrs ( win them over first as they are one of
  biggest barriers to collaboration)
• If largerglobal companies are in footprint, sell
  to europe first and they will then put pressure
  on UK
• Identify Current inefficiencies in process
  offer service to benchmark
• How to address relevance higher level
  skills/informal learning
• Identify hot business issue where get a quick win
  first
• Call qualifications something else abolish the
  words learning, skills training to ensure
  business relevance and buy in
• Incremental approach not tackle all issues at
  once

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Refining your model working with influencers
Refine model (research/analysis/consultation)
Who are your influencers? What role will they
have in creating your initial straw man? What
role will they play in employer engagement? See
Working with Stakeholders Planner
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Creating your EOI who should be on your team?

• Create expression of Interest
• (19th June)

What expertise do you need? Have you got
it? Where will you go for it? See Identifying
project team planner for a list of skills
identified by the group Other issues thought to
be of particular importance and should be
considered as part of the mix included The use
of consultants versus ensuring the SSC harness
all the skills and talent already available
within the organisation Ensuring synergies and
economies of scale are played in at the earliest
stage.
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Creating your EOI Next steps

• Create expression of Interest
• (19th June)

What are your next steps? What else do we need?
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Our next steps

• NSA practical pointers for successful EOIs
• 27th April 2006 10 am 4pm
• YORK MARRIOTT HOTEL
• TADCASTER ROAD, DRINHOUSES, YORK, YO24 1QQ
• What are our priority subjects?