Interviews

Skills Gateway: Supercharging staff with a new training provider

Skills Gateway is a new, free service to help match public sector organisations wanting to develop their workforce with the correct training providers. Its operations manager, Angie Took, spoke to PSE’s David Stevenson.

Sir Richard Branson once said: “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want do.”

This sentiment holds true, but organisations can find it a struggle to wade through the “dizzying” array of training providers in the marketplace.

In Greater Manchester, however, there has been an effort to tackle this issue with a new, free service. Skills Gateway, backed by Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Greater Manchester Learning Provider Network (GMLPN), acts as a single point of contact for employers to access a comprehensive catalogue of training provision and get support to find the most appropriate training for their business.

Angie Took, operations manager of Skills Gateway, told PSE: “If a public sector provider was looking for training and trying to understand what their staff need to do, we can help them work their way through that.

“It is quite a complex matter in terms of all the different levels and awards nowadays. Also, working out which training provider provides what course, where and when is also complex. We have that information at our fingertips.”

After in-depth discussion of what an employer wants to achieve, Skills Gateway identifies training providers with the most appropriate experience, services and success rates before linking them together.

“After filtering through our 250-strong catalogue of providers, we highlight two or three that are suitable for the client’s needs,” said Took. “We’re offering them two or three options as opposed to a website and internet search that can bring back hundreds.”

The service also uses an innovative new portal, developed by experts at Zero2Ten, named the 2014 Microsoft Dynamics Cloud Partner of the Year. The portal analyses more than 100 criteria about a company’s needs and checks these against the training provider database.

The system is kept up to date with success rates and services for each provider, ensuring organisations are offered the provider most likely to deliver tangible results for them. “We can record what the employer wants and how easy it is to find that provision,” said Took. “It also allows us to record where there is a skills gap.”

European first

Greater Manchester is the first region to use the European Social Funding Skills Support for the Workforce programme to develop this type of free skills service.

Louise Timperley, head of skills and employment at Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, believes the launch will have a direct effect on economic growth, because it is available to businesses too. She said: “Investment in skills drives the future growth and productivity of our local economy.”

Took, who agrees with Timperley’s assessment, said: “Our service is trying to make it easy and simple for employers – we do the work and research.

“By matching them against the most appropriate training providers, their training and learning is likely to be more successful. If we can develop that, and grow that market, then ultimately we’re going to be upskilling the workforce in Greater Manchester, which can only help businesses in terms of increased sales, profitability, productivity and retention of staff.”

There is a lot of willingness to develop staff and teams, but Took noted that finding the right training can be time-consuming, costly and confusing at a time when – coming out of the recession – small firms are working hard just to stay afloat. “But we have the knowledge that can help companies develop, and if we can help encourage the businesses to talk to us we can help them develop their workforce,” she said.

With the major aim of helping upskill the region’s workforce and improve standards among learning providers, Skills Gateway has received lots of local interest, especially from Bolton and Manchester City Council.Having worked with the economic leads at both councils, the service has received many referrals. “While working with employers and taking information, we’re trying to help them understand how it could benefit their business,” she said. “We also want to try to increase engagement with employers who have not approached learning and training before within their organisations.”

GMLPN chair Mark Currie is a big advocate of this approach. “The service will act as a vital link between the training sector and the public sector community, helping to identify areas of most need and providing useful insight to shape learning and development within the region to better meet the requirements of organisations,” he said.

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