Memorandum submitted by the Chartered
Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
BACKGROUND
1. As the UK professional body for trainers,
coaches and other people management-related professions, the Chartered
Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is well placed to
contribute to the current debate on skills. Drawing on the experiences
of our 125,000 members, many of whom are the principal decision-makers
for learning and development within their organisations; our annual
surveys on skills provide a solid benchmark with which to analyse
the effectiveness of and trends in learning and development in
UK organisations.
2. This memorandum to the Education and
Skills Committee thereby contains our initial observations on
Lord Leitch's recent report and some important messages about
the value of good people management.
NATIONAL POLICY
ISSUES
3. The CIPD shares the 2020 vision outlined
in Lord Leitch's Review of Skills but remains cautious as to whether
the Leitch blueprint will prove any more successful than similar
past exercises. And while there is much to applaud in Leitch's
analysis, not least the move away from the obsession with initiatives
(competency-led standards, e-learning, creating new advisory bodies)
which have irritated our members in the past; it understates the
holistic HR argument.
4. This view stems partly from our research
that both puts skills development in the wider context of the
value of good people management and highlights a shift away from
training to a broader range of learning activities. So while addressing
each of the points identified by the Committee in its terms of
reference, our principal recommendation is that additional consideration
be given to the value of good people management and on-job learning.
5. The CIPD supports the targets to improve
the UK's underlying rate of productivity growth, but notes that
Leitch is relatively vague on how precisely investment in skills
translates into higher productivity. The report acknowledges in
passing that "skills must be effectively used for the benefits
to be fully realised", and calls for improvements to management
and leadership skills to enable this, but puts too little emphasis
on the key role of effective people management. The assumption
is still that more training and qualifications automatically produces
higher productivity.
6. CIPD research shows that this is not
the case. It shows that skills development is much less effective
if it is detached from other people management practices such
as job appraisal and reward, job design, job quality, flexible
working and staff communication. Such an approach not only helps
the lower-skilled, but utilises the skills of higher-skilled employees
that are frequently under-utilised. As a recent CIPD survey of
2,000 UK employees shows, almost one in three employees feel that
they are not being managed well enough to make effective use of
their existing skills. Staff need not only the skills but also
the opportunity and the motivation to deploy them effectively,
which further underlines the importance of job quality and job
design.
7. Further, Leitch's focus on training and
formal qualification is somewhat at odds with the current shift
in employers' development practices from training to learning.
As the latest annual CIPD learning and development 2006 survey
shows, 38% of HR professionals say that on-the-job learning is
the most effective form of learning compared with just 17% who
say that of formal training qualifications.
8. And with UK organisations currently spending
£460 per employee on training, the key challenge is to maximise
the benefits of this relatively high amount of investment by delivering
it in the most effective way. And the answer to this is provided
in the recent CIPD study of leadership development practices,
which found that managers saw coaching, mentoring and structured
development assignments as more effective than formal training
courses.
EDUCATION SYSTEM
9. The overstated importance of formal teaching
activities in the classroom can also be seen in another recent
CIPD survey of 1,400 employers on the preparedness of school-leavers
aged 16-18 for the workplace—a group that contains many
of the lower-skilled workers that Lord Leitch is targeting. It
shows that employers are placing more emphasis on the soft skills
of school leavers such as communication skills and work ethic
than on formal qualifications or even literacy or numeracy. Further,
the key attributes employers look for in school leaver recruits
are communication skills (40% of employers rank this in their
top three required attributes), work ethic (39%) and personality
(32%). These rank higher than literacy (26%), numeracy (22%) and
formal qualifications (25%).
10. And when asked what the education system
might do to improve the employability of school leavers, a half
of employers ranked improved interpersonal skills in their top
three suggestions. This was followed by greater efforts to encourage
young people to take responsibility (40%), improvements in communication
skills (38%), and better discipline (32%). Employers are more
likely to stress the need for improvement in these areas than
in literacy (28%), numeracy (22%) and IT skills (19%).
11. We believe therefore that the education
system can help close the "employability gap" by seeking
to introduce more oral-based tests and more work experience schemes—while
equipping school-leavers with basic skills.
DEMAND
12. According to the CIPD's Who learns at
Work 2005 report (which shows that training spend is skewed towards
the higher-skilled), this employability gap appears difficult
to narrow when school-leavers enter the workplace. But while we
appreciate that there is a vacuum that needs to be filled, we
don't believe that Leitch's plans are practical or aligned to
business or organisational needs.
13. In particular, Leitch's wish for employers
to pledge that they will support low skilled employees to gain
Level 2 qualifications, with the strong hint of compulsion if
insufficient progress is made; gives too little weight to the
fact that employers will only invest in training if there is a
clear business for them to do so. And in the event of compulsion,
the Institute believes that such a blunt instrument will lead
to a poor allocation and targeting of training resources. The
one-sized, tick box approach is rarely the right policy prescription
for developing cultural change and we don't see this as an exception.
14. The institute's research shows that
many employers still see that training courses and qualifications
pay, so the key challenge must be to persuade employers of the
business case that knowledge and skills acquisition, particularly
at the lower end, is critical to their business or organisation.
SUPPLY
15. In spite of our scepticism towards this
proposal, we remain very supportive of many of Leitch's proposals.
The plan to streamline the agencies to form a new Commission for
Employment and Skills, employer led Skills Boards, and an Employment
and Skills service—all designed to improve the skills and
employability of jobless people—are particularly worthy
of mention.
16. We also support the concept of Trade
Union Learning representatives. The CIPD's aforementioned Who
learns at Work (CIPD 2005) report found that those with higher
levels of qualification and/or those in younger age groups are
more likely to receive training. Union learning representatives
can give valuable support to those sections of the workforce who
find it less easy to access employer—led training and this
makes them a valuable resource in broadening the appeal and effectiveness
of learning in the workplace.
17. CIPD's report "Trade union learning
representatives" (CIPD 2004) recommended involving union
learning representatives in a collaborative way to gain support
for workplace learning as part of the good people management agenda.
A learning agreement could, for example, signal the commitment
of senior managers to this partnership approach. The union learning
representatives' contribution would include encouraging demand
for learning in the workplace and support for a learning culture
throughout the workforce.
APPRENTICESHIPS
18. The CIPD has also recently published
a Large employers and apprenticeship training report that shows
that, despite considerable public subsidy, relatively few large
organisations participate in Advanced Apprenticeships. UK employers
are still not sold on the idea of Advanced Apprenticeships because
of their perception of the technical content of the recognised
vocational qualifications. Were the content of these qualifications
altered in the direction desired by employers, the willingness
of employers to participate would increase. It should be added
though that there are notable exceptions. For instance, the take-up
in Advanced Apprenticeships has been vast in the construction
industry. The report thus highlights the specific needs of individual
sectors and would appear to vindicate the institutional victory
of the Sector Skills Council over the Learning and Skills Council.
19. So in summary, the Institute shares
Leitch's analysis and agrees with many of the suggested measures,
provided that these are delivered alongside other people management
practices. However, we remain sceptical about the idea of Government
influencing how organisations should spend their training budgets
in a way that does not meet the needs of employees or employers.
20. The Committee might also be interested
to know that the institute will publish the results of a survey
of around 1,500 employers on skills in May that will provide information
on many of the issues covered in the Leitch report. We will of
course send copies of the report to the committee.
January 2007
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