With the UK’s skills system ‘in a mess’ according to prime minister Keir Starmer, the government is aiming to upskill the nation with the launch of Skills England. Bo Dury at Lepaya considers how the new skills strategy could impact businesses and what lessons can be learnt from the rollout of similar initiatives in the Netherlands.
One of the first and most ambitious of the new government’s initiatives was the launch of Skills England, a new body with the great task of upskilling the nation to meet the needs of businesses today and in the coming years.
Developing new skills is central to Keir Starmer’s plans to grow the UK economy, and it’s refreshing to hear ministers talking about upskilling workers rather than training. While this might seem like semantics, focusing on skills is a simple way to help reframe how employees, employers, and educators view learning and development. Alongside helping to create more opportunities for young people and allowing businesses to become less reliant on highly skilled workers outside the UK, it is hoped that the new initiative will combat unemployment.
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Providing job seekers with greater support and opportunities to acquire valuable skills is a smart way to help people who are currently out of work to retrain and re-enter the workforce, while demanding a healthy salary. With government statistics indicating that a growing number of employers are struggling to hire staff with the skills they need, it’s a particularly pressing issue. And one that has the potential to hamper economic growth. Yet despite this, it’s not a challenge that the UK is alone in contending with.
Lessons can be learnt from taking a closer look at how similar initiatives have been deployed across the channel in recent years.
Developing the workforce of the future
Here in the Netherlands, the Dutch government has tried several approaches to equip workers with the skills that employers need, with varying degrees of success. One of the most high-profile initiatives is the STAP scheme, which came into force three years ago. Previously, working-age individuals in the Netherlands were eligible to get a tax deduction on professional upskilling programmes. However, the new scheme went one step further, allowing workers to apply for courses and receive them for free. Despite good intentions, the quality of some courses on offer was hit and miss, and the content of others was questionable. For instance, one two-day course promised to help workers “discover themselves” by visiting Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Paris.
In light of this misuse, the STAP scheme has been replaced with an initiative that puts employers in the driving seat. SMEs can now access a training subsidy of up to €25,000 to provide learning and upskilling initiatives for their employees – something which is often too cost-prohibitive for many small businesses to self-fund in a meaningful way. This way, employees can benefit from upskilling in their industry directly from their employer: this ensures businesses benefit from new skills, employees benefit from career growth and, ultimately, the country benefits as industries grow the economy thanks to higher productivity.
The Dutch government has also had success with the National Growth Fund, which has been setup to foster greater collaboration and knowledge sharing between businesses, educational institutions, and the government. Launched in 2020, the initiative is expected to make a long-term economic impact through providing funding for upskilling workers in strategically important areas, building physical and digital infrastructure, and driving technological innovation through R&D programmes.
The focus on the long-term benefits of upskilling is refreshing – these schemes shouldn’t just be seen as short-term productivity boosts or ways for employees to secure their next opportunity, but rather, as with the National Growth Fund, a way of securing the foundations of a long term, high skills economy of the future. Another successful initiative is CompetentNL, which has been launched to drive greater alignment between education institutions and the labour market.
The initiative involves several key partners including TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research), the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, UWV (Employee Insurance Agency), and a wide spectrum of education institutions, trade unions, industry bodies, and other influential organisations across all sectors and areas of the Netherlands. This means that upskilling isn’t just happening in siloes, with employers focused on productivity and employees focused on career progression; rather, it allows skills development to be based on mutual improvement of a business, its workers, and the national economy to ensure that everyone benefits from upskilling.
No ‘silver bullet’ for upskilling the nation
These different but complementary approaches show there’s no clear and simple solution for governments to support skill development. However, if there is one lesson for the UK to learn from the Dutch experience of upskilling, it’s this: collaboration is essential. Bringing together educators, businesses, and the labour market is the key to ensuring that training and upskilling programmes focus on equipping workers with the most strategically important skills that will make the biggest difference to the economy. Working together to develop skills at every level will ensure that the workers of the future and those who are currently in employment develop the skills required to support industry transitions, ensuring the UK stays competitive and unemployment decreases.
Employers and HR teams must look to the future and consider how job roles are likely to change. Take the energy transition for instance. As we move away from using fossil fuels towards greener, electricity-powered solutions, engineers maintaining gas boilers will need to learn how to support a wider range of heating systems, or risk falling behind.
The upskilling initiatives led by the Dutch government also underline the importance of supporting SMEs in a sustained and focused way. While larger businesses often have the resources to invest in learning and development on an ongoing basis, this can be unaffordable for many smaller businesses, which account for much of the UK economy.
To truly develop employees, it’s not enough to offer one-off upskilling courses and see it as a tick-box exercise. Learning and development must be continual and shouldn’t just focus on what skills are in demand today. We must always keep one eye on the future.
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