The BSGA Column
To be or not to be… regulated A
In this article, David Allen, president of the British Sign & Graphics Association, answers the question: should the sign industry be regulated?
post on LinkedIn the other day set me thinking. The poster, having been asked to rectify a job that they’d previously lost due to price, was posing the question should the trade be regulated.
Now I’m not sure that full on regulation would be the way forward; ask anyone in road haulage or coach travel and others about the levels of outside interference from external agencies and no doubt, they will recount endless lists of red tape and bureaucracy that they must contend with.
Should the trade be regulated? Despite what you may think, sign making is considered a low-risk occupation. I suspect this is as much because we are still a small industry both in term in terms of numbers employed and the diverse sizes of businesses with smaller companies making up the majority. Yet the products we make are literally everywhere, which is not something many occupations can claim. So, should we have some form of regulation? I’m sure some will say 'absolutely not' or 'there’s nothing anyone can teach me I don’t already know' but in the absence of any existing standards, sometimes bad habits percolate through the trade and become endemic.
With the lack of a standard, it also leaves purchasers to look at how they regulate their suppliers and if they can’t find something exact to follow, they pick the next best thing or worse, accept substandard work because they can’t find anything to tell them otherwise. If necessary, authorities
www.signupdate.co.uk
might also take it upon themselves to regulate.
It’s frustrating at times to have to compete alongside those who have little or no skill or the inclination to get those skills so if we could have a scheme that you had to prove your competence by virtue of regular training and development surely that would be good for us all.
Developing training programmes
The skills we all take for granted have been transferred from person to person, in my case my father, an old school sign writer, and peers that I’ve worked with over the years. In this I suspect I’m not unique, and there’s no better way of learning than through experience and on the job. But with it being so easy to enter the market as a sign maker, maybe the time is right to consider developing a training and development programme leading to a recognised mark of competence.
We live in an age where qualifications and regulations are becoming increasingly sort after in other industries. How long can we as a trade hold out without needing to develop some sort of scheme like Gas Safe, NIC EIC and the like, developed by trades that realised that to give confidence to their clients and the authorities that they needed an industry backed scheme?
We’re still a craft industry, and in my view a vocational one, so any attempt to work towards a unified training and accreditation scheme won’t come easy or be quick but it could be of real long-term benefits to the trade and customers alike.
What are the benefits of regulation?
The most obvious benefit would be to provide reassurance to purchasers that the company they choose meets a required standard. The second benefit would be to those enlightened companies who adopt it, now, when you’re competing for a job at least you know that a majority of the time you will be competing against others who like you, have taken the time to get the right knowledge and skill set required to do a good job. If we do it right, regular reassessment would mean standards get raised year on year making a much better trading environment.
I know some will argue it’s not necessary or desirable but if a trade doesn’t organise itself, others may do it for them, sometimes with inappropriate and unobtainable requirements. Yes, there are ISO management standards, which you develop and which to some extent set you apart from those that don’t have it.
Becoming a member of your trade association
I think the time is right to consider being a member of your trade association and that should carry some additional weight beyond paying a subscription fee with a level of attainment of basic skill being required as part of having the badge. It’s not going to be quick or easy to develop and I know some of may disagree but if we could unify training across the sector surely this would make for a better safer place for us all to trade in the long term and go some way towards improving and enhancing skills and opportunities across the sector as a whole.
November/December 2024 | 49 |
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