Chris Brown
SH: We need to work with businesses, because we need to keep what we’re teaching to students relevant. We have developed apprenticeships that businesses couldn’t find in the north west. But it’s not always about a certificate. It might be that you can come to us if you need a short, flexible programme to upskill your existing staff.
PCS: We have been redefining our talent pool over the last five years and we have collaborated with some of the talent review assessors, looking at hiring for tomorrow, not for yesterday. We are looking for people who have learning agility, potential, collaboration skills, even if they don’t have experience.
The new talent equation is attitude first, then aptitude, then technical experience. And there are three ingredients I look for in candidates: common sense, courtesy and initiative.
We don’t just rely on CVs when we interview people. All I want to talk to them about is their life experience, ambitions and preferences. If I got your mum and dad in now, what are they going to say about you? In three months’ time, what are we not going to like about you? Reality and traits that usually appear. So, we have those honest conversations.
ED: We launched a pathways programme and found that 77 per cent of our managers would be interested in taking an entry level person in. We are trying to support those managers and we’ve developed a 12 week induction where the talent development team and other colleagues in the business will support managers and give them all the aftercare to develop those soft skills. We can train them in the technical side later and get them qualifications. That will come.
With recruitment, though, we are doing more assessment days where candidates come in. We do a range of activities to get to know them as a person and we have a lot of colleagues in the room who are observing everything about them. We are looking for people who aren’t the finished article but have potential.
CB: We always hire on attitude and potential, because someone who’s got the right attitude, you can teach them, you can train them to do anything, and we want to create mini entrepreneurs within the business so they can think and do things for themselves.
One of the things we don’t talk about enough in this country is culture and that has to be the key. We looked at everything and at what actually should our culture be in terms of our core values and then we recruit based on whether people fit those core values.
SH: In order for young people to get that work experience and be work ready, they have to get placements with employers. You can’t have a Saturday job until you’re 16. So where do
Jenn Briggs
they get that experience from to become work ready? That’s where the collaboration again comes, where they have some meaningful work placements with businesses.
GA: We have a range of departments and roles: engineers, cable manufacture, in house marketing, sales people out on the road, finance and purchasing. There is a varied skill set across the whole company. From a recruitment point of view, technical skills probably get you in the door for the interview. But we are looking at their attitude, their ability to learn and their communication skills.
If the employers aren’t engaging with the colleges and the educators, we can’t complain later and say there’s not a workforce there for us to be able to employ. If I look at my team on finance, it’s very much an 80/20 rule. If you have 20 per cent of the technical knowledge, then I can train you up with the rest of it.
MR: When I look at the last three people we have recruited, the combined age of those three people is about 58 or 59. But those three people were all recruited mainly on their attitude. We can teach them most of the things they need to know and, in our industry, we are working on things that didn’t even exist 12 months ago, so I’m not going to be able to find somebody that specialises in ChatGPT advertising because it has only just started in the UK.
GA: The way things have changed in everyone’s industry, it’s almost as though you are having to unlearn and then learn something new. To me it’s not just about young people, it’s people my age as well, who are still having to be educated in how industries are changing and the skill sets which are needed.
AI, automation, and the future workforce: how are new technologies changing the skills organisations need, and how do these stretch across sectors?
JB: We need everyone to still be able to talk to customers, talk to suppliers, talk to people, build those relationships and yes, AI might be able to wheel drinks or food to a table, but it’s that face to face welcome when somebody comes into a building that counts. I still believe a lot of things are done by a person, rather than through a computer or another resource.
Gary Alker
SH: AI and digital literacy are going to affect every business, but at different levels. All employees are going to need a certain level of digital literacy and AI understanding. It is about making sure your workforce has those skills. How are you training them? How have you built that into your development plan for your people?
GA: To a certain extent, some people were embarrassed to admit they were using AI in the past. Now we are all on board with it. It’s a tool to make you more efficient and get through things quicker. But it’s still important to have a breadth of knowledge and the maturity to understand what’s been given by that AI. It streamlines so many processes for me, but you need to be able to interpret it and to ask the right questions as well. It can’t just be seen as a silver bullet that answers everything.
CB: We use a couple of pieces of AI kit, particularly for things like tax and technical stuff. We can put documents in and ask AI to analyse them. But even then it can get things wrong and you have to be able to spot that. A lot of young people expect us to be using AI. But you have to understand the output. We did a whole piece of work with our IT provider to do an AI readiness piece and a couple of things had slipped through the net, so we have had to create an AI policy now.
MR: There are so many people putting receipts and bank statements into ChatGPT for analysis, and you need to be really careful about what data you’re uploading.
PCS: There are digital platforms that have been introduced to our business over the last two or three years, largely for reporting. All our phone calls are analysed, inbound and outbound, and keywords are introduced. It is used as a tool to support our team to develop. We also have AI looking at the percentage of calls coming in from different media.
ED: The biggest thing about AI is the time saving. The big question is what is happening with that extra time? Is it good quality interaction? Team meetings? Analysis? That is the key. We have a digital transformation agenda and digital influencers are coming together as a group. They are then going out creating good habits, educating and training.
Continued on Page 52 LANCASHIREBUSINES SV
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Zowi Whittaker
Edd Draper
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SKILLS
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