Human Resources - Training

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

1.0 TERMS OF REFERENCE

This report is for the second assignment in the Human Resource Development module of the BTEC HNC Business course. The report coincides with the assignment criteria and will be handed in to John Burke at TCAT College no later than 18 June 2009.

2.0 PROCEDURE

The information for this report will be founded from the extracts taken from the budget reports given with the assignment and from personal research. Questions will be answered and justified based upon this.

3.0 FINDINGS

3.1 Identify and explain a range of contemporary training initiatives that have been introduced by the UK government

Learn Direct

This initiative is a government sponsored network of online learning set up in 1998, it provides an opportunity for individuals to up-grade or improve their by taking various courses online in there own time. They do not have to attend college for example in education nor do they have an assessor such as with NVQ’s come out and visit them.

The courses range from all kinds of areas including Maths, English, IT and Management skills. Basic Numeracy and Literacy courses are free of charge and others range from £19.99. The intensity of the courses can be basic up to university level. They have centres local to where people live, not only in major cities where help and advice can be sought and on the telephone. The downside to these courses however is that they often are not recognised qualifications so although they may teach you new skills, if they are not recognisable employers will be unaware of the individuals competence and thus they may have to go on and complete an NVQ or similar.

They also have areas to help businesses with training employees and helping to meet organisational objectives as well as assessing whether any funding could be sought.

Modern Apprenticeships

This initiative was introduced in 1994; they were re-branded to ‘Apprenticeships in 2004. It is aimed at individuals over 16. The aim is to develop skills with hands on experience by joining employers and apprentices together. Originally these were only in trades such as plumbing and carpentry but now in a range of areas from hairdressing to administration.

A recent campaign from the government during February and March for Apprenticeships has included TV, radio, press and online advertising to raise awareness using Sir Alan Sugar as the brand face, he says apprentices “Make Things Happen”.

Apprenticeships allow the trainee to learn and gain nationally recognised qualifications whilst earning a wage of at least £80/week but most employers pay more. Typically an apprenticeship can last between 1-2 years but some can go up to 5. There are no fixed entry requirements for most Apprenticeships. However, for some more technical Apprenticeships such as Electrical Installations GCSE grades A*- C in Maths, English and science are usually required.

These apprenticeships are widely known throughout the UK, however are more suited to school leavers wanting to get into a trade, I say this because if an older person is on an Apprenticeship, the minimum wage rule does not apply and they are given a ‘Training Allowance’ most adults with mortgages and other typical outgoings could not manage on these wages alone but would struggle to find a second job that would supplement their income enough.

Train to Gain

This initiative is designed to develop the skills of employees already in the workplace by providing a number of funding methods to assist businesses. They offer free impartial advice to companies and match any training needs identified with training providers. The idea is to help businesses improve their productivity and competitiveness by ensuring that staff have the right skills to do the best job, for example a stores man receiving forklift training.

The Learning and Skills Council deal with Train to Gain and they contract out if you like to ‘Business Brokers’ and learning providers who organise the training and advise of funding etc.

Often NVQ’s (National Vocational Qualifications) are a typical training type although they can come in all areas studying at work, college, or as part of an Apprenticeship.

They are It is a 'competence-based' qualifications meaning what you learn is designed to develop the skills and knowledge to do a job effectively. They are a national standard which says what a competent person in a job could be ...

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The Learning and Skills Council deal with Train to Gain and they contract out if you like to ‘Business Brokers’ and learning providers who organise the training and advise of funding etc.

Often NVQ’s (National Vocational Qualifications) are a typical training type although they can come in all areas studying at work, college, or as part of an Apprenticeship.

NVQs are at levels 1 to 5 on the National Qualifications Framework, as with Learn Direct courses, level 1 would be very basic whereas level 5 would be at university level.

New Deal

This initiative is part of the government’s strategy to get people off benefits and into work. It offers support and guidance for people in need of extra help to find work. The Job Centre help with this and the programmes are split between young people, over 25’s, disabled etc depending on requirements. For example for young people, if they are aged between 18 to 24 and have been claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance for 6 months or more, they must take part in New Deal for young people.

The idea is New to give the individual a chance to train, learn and do work experience so that they can learn skills, increase confidence and find and keep work. It is also supposed to be beneficial to employers as it helps them to find employees who are willing to learn only if the initiative is compulsory after a certain time, then this may mean that people still out of work after the 6 months are not really interested in finding work.

It is however a good initiative to help people who really do want work who may be originally turned down by an employer due to lack of skills, no recent track history of work so no one to approach for a reference, thus people who have been long term ill or have taken a break to have children. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who abuse the system and this seems to be where the government are stepping in to regulate these people.

3.2 What are the government trying to achieve by these and other methods?

The Learning and Skills Council are responsible for funding and planning all education and training for over 16’s in England other than people in university. It states on there website “We have a single goal: to improve the skills of England’s young people and adults to ensure we have a workforce of world-class standard”

The government are trying to bring us up to the same levels of education and have the same skilled workforce as competing countries. They are also trying to decrease the level of unemployment and give everybody the same opportunities for example allowing poorer families funding for their children to go to university, whereas in previous years this may have only been for the wealthier families.

This in turn will provide better economic growth and the UK being able to respond better to changes in the external environment.

They want to be able to have a workforce that can constantly progress within jobs and give people more opportunities that would have historically been up to the employer / individual to fund, in past years this hasn’t been possible as companies have felt that the money could be better spent elsewhere. Also in past years the government have had a lot less involvement in providing training that is suitable, again it has all been about university degrees and paper based learning in full time education therefore training such as manual handling etc has been up to private training providers to approach companies, often at high costs. This is where the Train to Gain scheme has come in, still using the private training providers to advise but handing them the funding keeping the private companies in business and the businesses in need of training at no or minimal costs.

It is important that the government train people so that they are adequately skilled and knowledgeable in their trade/industry so that they can go on to progress themselves possibly in setting up new enterprises thus again making the UK more competitive and having a better quality of commerce. This chain of businesses is vital to the UK’s economy because we need to keep up with other companies in all sorts of areas such as technology and construction, this will limit the amount of migrant workers needed to be imported from other countries and giving the British people more jobs here in the UK. A recent skills push to fulfil a promise of “British Jobs for British Workers” by the government shows they recognise this current problem. John Denham the University and Skills Secretary stated that “It will help ensure that nobody here is unable to get a job because it is easier to employ a skilled worker or better qualified migrant worker”

3.3 Evaluate their success

The government’s success is questionable, for various reasons, from unemployment levels still being too high to young adults coming out of school with no or little basic skills such as reading and writing. It has been reported that “When recruiting school leavers, over 40% of small businesses report problems with basic, low level skills – such as literacy and numeracy, and soft skills such as communication.” It continues to say “ the need for 3.5 million basic skills courses is an acknowledgement that the education system is not performing as it should” I have to agree with this last statement, it is worrying that 40% of people need basic skills after spending over 10 years + learning these skills. Another statement says that. “It is estimated that nearly a third of people of traditional working age in the UK are poorly qualified and almost 7 million have problems with numeracy or literacy” When taking this into account and the amount of money the government have been spending to improve things you would expect to see skills of people vastly improving, however we are still behind countries such and France and Germany. This has a lot stemmed from successive governments being reluctant to pass training legislation, costs have always been up to the individual firm and where major costs have been involved, businesses haven’t been able to afford to provide the relevant training.

However the government are recognising these problems and in particular the Learning and Skills Council are working to resolve these issues by the various different initiatives as some are outlined above, I do think though that by possibly trying too hard they are trying to overcomplicate things with around 10 initiatives, half of them doing the same thing but aims and objectives worded differently, some cover the UK, some only cover England, some covering over 16’s and the workplace, some covering over 18’s and the workplace etc.

Some productivity statistics shown in Appendix A also show that there has been no increases but in fact decreases, wage costs however have increased, considering that employees should be becoming better skilled and more competent within their jobs shows that there are flaws in the system as productivity should increase not decrease.

Another problem is that the government have all these training initiatives but myself personally hadn’t even heard of some of them so I can imagine others won’t have either, the problem with this is that the government is spending lots of tax payers money but without making us suitably aware of what they are doing. Therefore they cannot expect skills and productivity to increase rapidly if they are not advising they people who need to advance well enough. In contrast to this though, it is only some of the initiatives that are not being broadcast well enough, as said earlier the Apprenticeships scheme has ran a campaign with Sir Alan Sugar at the forefront, a well known self made business man and the Train to Gain scheme uses training government training providers and private companies to spread the word and inform the individuals and companies of the UK.

3.4 What is the government’s future role in lifelong learning and continuous development?

The government has a role to fulfil its objectives to give the same opportunity for all, whether this be in education such as university or training on the job such as Apprenticeships.

To do this they have a duty to make people aware of what is on offer and help them in taking up training courses and becoming better skilled and more knowledgeable. They also have a duty to assist both companies and individuals with relevant funding so that this is enabled.

For the future of the UK economy it is important that the government organise this training to bring us up to date with other countries, this will allow us to progress and move forward as a country by being better skilled and able to be more competitive. There role is to make sure this happens and that we don’t fall any further behind our competing countries such as France and Germany but yet become level with them.

The governments role is to focus on supporting and responding to learning in the commercial workplace, concentrating on business and individual needs rather than solely in an educational environment such as university. Higher education now covers areas of Level 5 NVQ’s, Diplomas and Apprenticeships not just Degrees.

The government still need to focus on these areas but not purely these alone, many people are coming out of university now and are not able to gain jobs at the level they require as they do not have the practical level of skills needed and insisted on by potential employers, experience and skills is a necessity not just knowledge.

The government has a role to find a happy medium between the two that benefits the individual, the businesses essential to the economy and thus eventually benefitting the UK as a whole.

In these roles the government has to work with a variety of people and regulate the way they each inform the end user of the training, this being the individual and companies.

CONCLUSION

Suggest some future direction for the government in the conclusion

To conclude I feel that the government are slowly recognising the importance of training after typical knowledgeable education in GCSE’s and A Levels to more work based training for people in jobs such as a technicians. They have recognised that work based training provides a better skilled workforce for the UK and not limiting Britain to opportunities that other countries may have, it will allow us to be more competitive and increase economic growth.

I would suggest that the government try to cut down on the amount of different initiatives they offer and try to merge some of them together so that they all complete different objectives to achieve the overall aim of the government in increasing the skills and making the UK more competitive. I feel almost like the government have had a strong reality check with Britain needing so many migrant workers as our own is not competent and is panicking to try out every type of initiative in rapidly increasing the knowledge and skills, however I feel that they should take a step back and try to see what exactly is needed and provide realistic objectives upon this.

These should be clear so that everyone is aware of what help is available and it is easily accessible, they know who to go to and how to organise the relevant training. It is also important that the government raise the standards of education for under 16’s so that when they do come out of school they are ready for college or work based training and do not have to spend copious amounts of time re-learning basic skills such as Numeracy, Literacy and Communication. It is important that the government learn from their mistakes and progress in the future, they can only do this by making everyone aware of the possible opportunities and helping them to achieve them.

The government also would do well I feel to work more with Learn Direct which has a great concept but perhaps needs tweaking in making the online courses and qualifications more recognisable with employers, individuals looking for work would be more willing to pay for a course if they thought it would be recognised on their CV.

The government if they carry out all their objectives will achieve their overall aim in making the UK more competitive and equal or better than competing countries not only in Europe but worldwide, this is turn should also increase the amount of people wanting the visit the UK, for example Dubai is a very competitive country, with businesses constantly growing and progressing the country, thus becoming more popular and increases the amount of people who want to visit and increasing the tourist market.