Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 141)
WEDNESDAY 14 JUNE 2000
MR CHRIS
HUMPHRIES CBE, MS
RACHEL SPENCE
AND MR
PAUL BIRT
140. The lot is falling upon Paul.
(Mr Humphries) I will add finally after that from
the Skills Task Force perspective because we are about to pronounce
on that issue as well.
141. Right.
(Mr Birt) We had a discussion about similar topics
earlier and one of the things that I feel about organisations
that take entry level individuals is for many years the country
has operated a number of programmes which are designed to prepare
both young people and adults for the world of work and I suppose
there is a lot of emphasis being placed, perhaps in the States
and so on, on organisations that focus on groups of individuals
and almost philanthropically manage their careers through a few
years. I suppose the point that I perhaps would like to make is
that I do not see this country and the employers in this country
as being inherently different from that. Many organisations take
the view that bringing someone on board with a view to training
them for a period of two to three years as part of the front end
of their career is likely to end in that young person or that
adult moving on. I think it is a fact of employment that people
do not always stay in the same job for lengthy periods of time.
I am not sure if I am answering the point as concisely as you
would like but I think in terms of the responsibility for employers
I think employers do have a responsibility to train people from
entry level. As to whether or not they are not doing that, I would
argue that many of them are and that is across the board. There
are many large engineering and consultancy firms which are quite
happy to get two good years out of someone having trained them
intensively for the first six months, knowing fine and well that
the likelihood is that they could move on.
(Mr Humphries) Let me pick up a specific issue around
the sort of proposition that is going on in the States and then
talk about the Task Force more generally on networks. No large
employer on the scale of many of those with lots of entry level
jobs is being philanthropic or altruistic in offering that form
of training. In that sense I do not think there is a transferability
of those sorts of schemes unless exactly the same economic conditions
apply. One does not want to name companies but if significant
fast food outlets are offering longer term career progression
training it is precisely because they have a huge problem in retaining
for any length of time people at the entry level and are desperate
to reduce their recruitment costs and turnover costs and efficiency
costs and actually find that tying individuals in with opportunities
for contributions to their college or university programme is
one way of strengthening the length of service they get out of
them. There is a clear economic benefit, not an altruistic reason
for them doing this. I believe it is only transferrable to other
employers if you can identify the exact same or very similar economic
benefit, so I am not sure how transferrable that sort of approach
is. Having said that, the whole issue of employer networks is
in my view the absolute core to addressing how you actually raise
the employability and skills of the existing workforce, either
those in entry level jobs, whether they are new recruits or long
term adult recruits. In the Task Force report, which is forthcoming,
and of course I cannot anticipate the Secretary of State's launch,
you would not be surprised to see substantial recommendations
about funding and properly developing employer learning networks
right across the UK, focusing on small and medium enterprises
and recognising the fact that something like 80 per cent of employing
small businesses actually operate out of business parks, industrial
estates and high streets, in other words they cluster. Building
on clusters by providing learning centres in those clusters that
actually guarantee access to learning of a similar form to that
that Ford can apply through its EDAP scheme, and providing similar
encouragement for doing it in small firms, has to be the way forward
for the future. I am convinced it can be done. I think there are
models of good practice. I think that you would not be surprised
if someone like me thought it might be the responsibility of the
Learning and Skills Council to make such a programme happen over
the coming years.
Chairman: Very good. We are very grateful to
you for giving us that little flavour of what we can expect from
the forthcoming report. Thank you very much indeed. I am sorry
that you felt you needed an intermediary between us and yourselves.
We have enjoyed it immensely, I hope you have too. It has been
enormously valuable to us. Thank you for your patience.
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