The Cambridge Ahead Skills Group is currently working to increase careers education, employer engagement with schools, apprenticeship uptake and effectiveness, and ensure employees of organisations in the area can gain the right skills they need for the future.
Gareth recently ran a poll, where 92% of respondents said their biggest issue was resourcing. This response illustrates how resourcing threats are currently the most significant limiting factor on business growth in our economy. Further emphasising the importance of recruiting, developing and retaining staff.
The Cambridge Ahead Skills Group is currently working to increase careers education, employer engagement with schools, apprenticeship uptake and effectiveness, and ensure employees of organisations in the area can gain the right skills they need for the future.
How Cambridge Ahead’s Skills Group plan to tackle resourcing issues
The Levelling Up white paper identifies 12 missions and of those, two are directly related to the work of Cambridge Ahead; education and skills. Several others are fundamentally linked; housing, transport, digital connectivity, health, and living standards.
Educational levelling up will drive skills levelling up, which will aid productivity which will, in turn, drive wealth and living standards up. This will then aid health and increase the quality of life in the Cambridge region.
How Cambridge Ahead can help
Cambridge Ahead is in a strong position to inform and shape the Local Skills Improvement Plans for our area and ensure that our member’s voices are effectively reflected due to the multitude of businesses that support the members of Cambridge Ahead.
Cambridge Ahead can help inform these local plans and ensure they are delivered with impact due to such a varied and experienced group of organisational and sector experts in the Skills Group. Each have specialisms that contribute to our three strategic focus areas:
1. Career education and school engagement. Young adults form an increasingly critical part of many of our talent pipelines and it is crucial that they have relevant advice to help them make decisions about their futures. These are areas it is clear the pandemic has hit hard and if central government won’t take the lead in preventing the long-term career scarring that is all too possible then we need to be part of the solution.
2. Apprenticeships. These are still far too inconsistent in value for different sectors, different job roles and different employers. More flexibility in how levy funding can be invested is to be welcomed. Shorter, modular training interventions will be well suited to the dynamic nature of modern skills needs.
3. Labour market supply and skills system responsiveness to industry trends, including digital skills and green skills supporting the net-zero transition. As well as the broader, transferable soft skills that are becoming the real value-add as automation, AI and other technologies continue to amplify human talent.
Gareth is well placed to chair the Cambridge Ahead Skills Group due to his extensive knowledge and experience in training new skills, delivering apprenticeships, working with schools to increase careers engagement, and his awareness of the importance of skills development for solving resourcing issues.
You can find out more about the Cambridge Ahead Skills Group here: https://www.cambridgeahead.co.uk/our-projects/skills/
