Memorandum 30
Submission from the Chartered Institute
of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
BACKGROUND
1. The CIPD's primary purpose is to improve
the standard of people management and development across the economy
and help our individual members do a better job for themselves
and their organisations.
2. The CIPD is well placed to comment on
skills and training policy, with 130,000 members, from organisations
of all sectors of the UK economy, many of whom are their organisation's
principal decision-makers in the recruitment, deployment and development
of skills within the workplace. Our members are both front line
deliverers of training and development and key stakeholders for
anyone involved in delivering learning on behalf of government
or private sector suppliers.
3. Our numerous surveys and research draw
on the experiences of our substantial membership base and provide
a solid benchmark with which to analyse both current and emerging
trends in the skills agenda.
4. This memorandum to the Innovation, Universities
and Skills Committee draws upon this benchmark and summarises
our observations of skills and training policy implementation
to date.
MAKING THE
MOST OF
HIGHER EDUCATION,
FURTHER EDUCATION
AND LIFELONG
LEARNING
5. The CIPD believes higher education (HE),
further education (FE) and lifelong learning have a vital role
in making the United Kingdom more productive. If led by market
demand, both FE and HE can give employers and employees the skills
and qualities they need for economic productivity and growth.
In an ever changing market, lifelong learning can ensure individuals
and business are well positioned to adapt to shifts in demand.
6. The CIPD believes that FE and HE will
be better placed to meet market demand and contribute towards
increased productivity if skills acquisition is combined with
effective people management.
7. Findings from our extensive research
show that skills acquisition alone does not automatically produce
higher productivity. Instead, our research shows that skills
development is more effective if it is combined with other people
management practices such as job appraisal and reward, job design,
job quality, flexible working and staff communication. CIPD research
also emphasises the importance of developing the capability and
capacity of managers in this process.
8. Staff members 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. Given that job design is a technical process, with responsibility
shared by HR and line managers, CIPD argues that training in job
design should be made more widely available to UK managers and
that such training should receive government subsidy to incentivise
acquisition of the key skills involved in job/organisational design
and development.
9. CIPD strongly believes that the impact
of skills acquisition via further and higher education, is most
beneficial when organisations have the right people and the right
functions in place to:
— Identify what skills are needed to
drive organisational performance and increase business productivity—and
to map skills development to specific training and education,
including further and/or higher education; and
— Regularly assess whether the skills
sets of existing staff match the skill needs of their role and
of the business—and where they don't match, engage individuals
in the appropriate learning and development, including further
and/or higher education.
10. CIPD research also emphasises the importance
of developing the capability and capacity of managers in this
process. Employers acknowledge the importance of people management
in driving individual and organisational performance and productivity.
In a recent survey of over 700 of our members 90% of respondents
felt management and leadership skills were the key to driving
their business objectives over the next two years. Moreover, 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. CIPD therefore
argues that the government should provide incentives and targets
geared to improving the quality of management and leadership practice
and development in the UK.
11. Further and higher education courses
should more obviously be encouraged to favour a strong practical,
applied approach to curriculum geared to the development of managers
and leaders. FE and HE providers should be encouraged to include
practitioner experience in course delivery.
12. We also argue that government-sourced
research funding should be actively geared to stimulating research
outcomes that are practitioner-friendly, accessible to line managers
and aimed at influencing better leadership and management practice.
IMPLEMENTING SKILLS
AND TRAINING
AND POLICY—THE
IMPACT SO
FAR
13. The extent to which skills and training
policy has influenced organisations' learning and development
activities is perhaps still open to question. Our recently released
2008 CIPD Learning and Development Survey, shows that that two
in five respondents feel their learning and development activity
has been influenced by Leitch recommendations. Just over half
however (53%) do not feel that their strategies have been influenced
by the recommendations at all.
14. Public sector organisations are most
likely to say their learning and development activity has been
influenced by changes to skills and training policy (56%). However,
almost two-thirds of private sector organisations (61%) don't
feel that strategies have been influenced by the policy changes
at all.
15. While some organisations may not have
been greatly influenced by the recommendations, findings show
respondents are actively involved in learning and development.
Nearly 80% of respondents have specific training budgets, with
a median training spend per employee of £300.
16. The CIPD's research indicates that most
popular skills and training initiatives amongst employers appears
to be the provision of vocational or occupational specific training
for employees and the involvement of government-sponsored NVQs/SVQs
(52%).
17. The popularity of this type of training
is certainly a useful step towards addressing skills requirements
of business. However, the CIPD also believes that such initiatives
will be more likely to pay a genuine productivity dividend if
combined with efforts to raise employers' investment in intermediate
and higher levels skills—particularly in higher education.
ASSESSING THE
ROLE OF
SKILLS BODIES
OR AGENCIES
18. Considering the nature of their work,
many of the CIPD's members interact with a wide variety of public
and private sector bodies to help them identify their training
needs, offering advice on training and providing training courses.
Based on this experience, the CIPD has asked employers to rate
these bodies (refer Table 1).
19. Findings from this research show that
private sector training providers are rated most highly (described
as "good" by almost two-thirds of respondents and "bad"
by only 3%). Universities, employer networks and further education
colleges are rated relatively highly by employers.
20. By contrast, most public agencies are
given low ratings, including the Learning and Skills Council and
Sector Skills Councils. Of particular interest is the low rating
given to Regional Development Agencies, with only a quarter of
respondents describing their service as "good" and 18%
rating them "bad").
21. When employers were asked to identify
what would increase their contact with publicly funded skills
bodies, over two thirds referred to increased help with funding
training. However, half of the respondents surveyed also want
agencies to be more responsive to their needs and to operate with
less bureaucracy. These results highlight both the need for improving
the existing public bodies, and ensuring any new bodies quickly
demonstrate their credentials amongst employers.
Table 1: How employers rate training bodies
(%)
| Good | Average
| Bad |
| Private training providers | 63
| 34 | 3 |
| Universities | 59 | 39
| 2 |
| Employer networks | 50 |
47 | 3 |
| FE colleges | 48 | 46
| 6 |
| Business Link | 33 | 54
| 13 |
| Learning and Skills Council | 33
| 52 | 15 |
| Chamber of Commerce | 30 |
57 | 13 |
| Sector Skills Councils | 28
| 59 | 13 |
| Regional Development Agency | 24
| 58 | 18 |
Source: Labour Market Outlook, CIPD/KPMG Spring 2007
22. This memorandum has summarised our observations of
skills and training policy implementation to date.
April 2008
| 
