The Skills Shortage in Birmingham, UK

Skills Report
Birmingham Mail, 30^th May 2014

STUDENTS TO MISS OUT ON SKILLED JOBS – Beverly Nielsen, Birmingham City University (UK).

Students from Birmingham will miss out on an increasing number of top jobs in the city due to lack of skills, according to a new report. Managerial, Professional, and Technical jobs in the city are more likely to be taken up by young people elsewhere i.e. outside Birmingham.

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (CESI) said the report “points to a skills crisis facing the UK’s regional city”. The report reveals that almost 50% of new students at the main colleges in Birmingham are studying low-level courses. It predicts that there will be skills shortages in Social Services, Health, Education, Manufacturing Design, Engineering, and Computing.

Adam Crews, Senior Research Associate at CESI found that the city is falling behind the rest of the West Midlands in terms of employment opportunities and economic activity. He also reported that subjects taught in the post-16 sector across the region, don’t prepare young people for well-paid employment or rather the young people choose options that don’t prepare them for well-paid employment.

Researchers found that half the courses taken in the city at colleges were at the basic level 2 and a third are short term. Total employment is set to rise by 5% between 2013 and 2022 particularly in the Managerial, Professional, and Technical sectors.

Key Challenges

1.  Birmingham has lost out on market progress in the region.
2. A growth in jobs that are in declining sectors and which attract low earnings.
3. Schools and colleges are failing to provide effective advice.
4. The further education sector is failing to address the mismatch between skills taught and the demands of the labour markets.
5. Looming shortages of graduates with business and management qualifications.

----------------------------------------  END OF REPORT   -----------------------------------------

FullEmploy was setup to reduce unemployment and the skills shortage and maintain them at low levels. However, I’m finding it difficult to get lists of skills required by industry. After emailing 6 companies close to where I live in Bartley Green, only 1 company replied and only to tell me that they will not be sending me a list of skills let alone setup a meeting with me. The other 5 companies didn't have the courtesy of replying. This stopped me from writing to the other 14 companies in the same business park let alone research another 10 nearby.

I need a change of tack. This time I’m going to approach the other 3 players in the plan: the Unemployed, Training Organisations, and the Skills Funding Agency who should pay for the training. I planned to start with the Unemployed to get commitment to the plan before I go to the others. The Training Organisations are split into 2 categories: Academic and Practical training.

Now that Birmingham City University had conducted research on behalf of CESI, we need to send it to all post-16 education establishments to make them aware of the problem. Maybe they’ll have better luck at persuading companies to handover skills required by industry. One point on the report says that schools and colleges are failing to provide effective advice to young people. How can they when companies are refusing to cooperate.

In the light of this report, I’m going to try again quoting excerpts from the report and offer to pay them reasonable expenses. After all, producing a list of jobs and the skills required to do them, will involve extra resources and time which has to be paid for.

I tried selling this idea to local Councillors but they said that they couldn't help as decisions are taken at Cabinet level. Besides, the cabinet operates within the remit imposed by Central Government vis-a-vis the austerity measures which require the public sector to reduce spending by 25% over 4 years between April 2011 and March 2015. The people will give their verdict in next year’s general election (2015).

First, I need to get hold of this report – it’s right up my street. I also need to publish my findings on the MPC News and the FullEmploy websites. Then I need to promote these websites widely and invite would-be employees who will be given shares in those companies. Employees have to be unemployed and living in the ward where they’ll work because FullEmploy will build an office in every logical ward that has a collective population of 25,000 people.

For background information read this.

Day 10: How do the Perceptiveness, Persistence and Risk Taking Characteristics affect FullEmploy?

Welcome to day 10 of the Characteristics of a business owner cum entrepreneur. I know it's been over 2 months since I blogged but it should be worth the wait.

Perceptiveness:
When delegating or negotiating you not only need to be flexible and open-minded but you also need to be perceptive to the needs of your counterparts. When delegating, it's crucial to perceive your subordinates' feelings so that you can better understand what they think you expect from them and you can more accurately understand their contributions so that it makes it easier to incorporate them into your plans. With negotiations, perceptiveness can help you avoid pitfalls and get better deals.

FullEmploy's staff cooperate with each other; they don't negotiate. They all work on the same remit. If different methods of solution are suggested they may be tolerated but they will be reviewed based on the effects on the original remit.

Persistence:
This sounds similar to the Drive characteristic which is the energy to drive projects through. Persistence is usually invoked in the face of failure. Theory has it that successful people look for the opportunity in every failure. FullEmploy has formalised this into what it calls the Business Development Lifecycle (BDL). This is where staff consider WHAT activity they're required to do; the RESOURCES needed to do it; HOW it's going to be achieved; and WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

The BDL imposes that staff do a brainstorming session to come up with a series of methods of solution. Then using the best one in their action plan and the remainder as alternative method of solution in a contingency plan for that activity. Then they produce a Monitoring Plan not only to monitor the progress of the agreed upon method, but also on the effectiveness of the chosen resources including the human resources.

These reports are analysed and regularly reviewed at set milestones in the action plan. If a failure occurs before a milestone is due, then if the failure is minor, an alternative method and/or resource can be used. But if the failure is major and that none of the alternative methods and resources can ameliorate it, an emergency review is convened where a new plan is created or the project is abandoned.

Risk Taking:
When a project is being planned, many alternative methods of solution are proposed. The best ones are used in the project action plan and the rest are used as contingencies for each activity. During planning "What if" analyses are performed to stress test the plan.

Sometimes you get conflicting answers some of which suggest that the project should be abandoned. The entrepreneur has to take a measured risk but should treat it as an activity and monitor the risk as part of the monitoring plan and review the results at the review meeting or emergency review.

All entrepreneurs learn the lesson from any setback (failure) and continue in the light of the new experience i.e persist until successful. Napoleon Hill once said "A quitter never wins and a winner never quits". FullEmploy's interpretation of this is "A quitter never wins but a winner knows when to quit". A horse racer knows when to stop flogging a dead horse and a shrewd business person knows when to cut his/her losses.