Local Skills Improvement Plan for Leicestershire and Leicester and it’s headlines and hooks for the sport & physical activity sector

The Local Skills Improvement Plan for Leicester and Leicestershire has been produced with some key headlines and hooks and learning for our sector.

Headlines:

• Team working is the most important skill across all sectors involved, followed by: verbal communication; specific occupational skills; written communication and time management
  • Being a team player is the most important behaviour and the most important skills for all sectors involved in this work.
  • Behaviour was deemed most important in terms of recruitment, followed by skills and knowledge, suggesting that businesses feel more able to train recruits with the appropriate knowledge and skill areas than behaviours.
  • With regards to the types of qualifications, the most relevant for Sport & Health businesses, professional body qualifications, degrees and GCSEs.

The Leicester and Leicestershire Trailblazer Local Skills Improvement Plan report has been produced, but behind this is a new data tool which shares the latest supply and demand data which has primary and secondary data behind the dashboards. The tools is called the Collective Intelligence Skills Observatory (CISO), designed for educators, funders, awarding bodies, businesses and citizens.

This project was led by the East Midlands Chamber and supported by CIMSPA, Active Together, the LLEP other FE colleges and key local bodies connected to the 3 sectors involved in this work – Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Logistics and Sport & Health.

The LSIP has three objectives:

• To identify the Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours required to meet employers' growth aspirations, the relative importance of these and how current provision is meeting needs.

• To automate the process of evidence gathering and take a user-led approach to its presentation.

• To identify barriers in the LSIP geography to ensuring training and education meets the needs of employers, make recommendations for how these can be overcome and present an action plan for doing this.

The daily responses to the app based questions are behind the live data set which we can all interrogate from our own perspectives. 52 sport and health businesses, 42 manufacturers, and 28 businesses from the logistics sector all contributed to this data set.

Key Points to Share:

Confidence - All sectors have relatively low levels of confidence when asked about their ability to recruit the people they needed to meet their businesses' ambitions.

Investment - When asked how much of the cost they should pay towards investing in training staff there was a wide variation among respondents, although a consistent average across all three sectors of approximately two thirds.

Knowledge Areas - Across all sectors, technical and vocational knowledge areas are the most important to a business's success. The next four top areas are: Basic literary; Basic numeracy; Health & Safety; Basic IT.

• With regards to the types of qualifications, the most relevant for Sport & Health businesses, professional body qualifications, degrees and GCSEs.
• Word of mouth, online platforms and recruitment agencies are the most popular forms of accessing people with the right knowledge areas. The Sports & Health sector also makes more use of universities. The top reasons given are the volume and breadth of candidates, a deemed high capacity of the provider to meet their needs, cost and convenience.
• Schools, Careers Fairs, ITPs and job centres are the least popular forms of accessing people with the right knowledge areas. A perceived low level of training is the main reason for this.

Skill Areas - Team working is the most important skill across all sectors, followed by: verbal communication; specific occupational skills; written communication and time management

• The areas least important are: industry software skills; coding and programming; sales; project planning and management and leadership
• With regards to the types of qualifications, the most relevant for Sport & Health businesses they are professional body qualifications, apprenticeships and degrees.
• The most popular forms of accessing people with the right skills areas are word of mouth, online platforms and recruitment agencies. The top reasons given is volume and breadth of candidates, a deemed high capacity of the provider to meet their needs, cost and convenience
• The least popular are schools, job centre, careers fairs, FE colleges and independent training providers. These are deemed to have low capacity, low levels of training and a poor volume and breadth of candidate.

Behaviour areas - Being a team player is the most important behaviour, followed by: being hard working; reliable; resilient; and honest

The most popular forms of accessing people with the right behaviours are word of mouth, online recruitment platforms, face-to-face recruitment agencies and universities. The main reasons given are good volume and breadth of candidates, high capacity to provide good candidates and convenience.

The least popular forms are careers fairs, job centre plus and schools. The main reasons given are low capacity to provide good candidates, low level of training and poor volume and breadth of candidates.

The relative importance of Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours

• Having people with the right behaviours is deemed the most important for a business's success.
• Having people with the right skill areas was deemed slightly more important than knowledge.
• In terms of the importance of recruiting behaviours, knowledge and skill areas (as opposed to training them once in post), the gap was larger between the three areas, with behaviour again deemed most important, followed by skills and knowledge, suggesting that businesses feel more able to train recruits with the appropriate knowledge and skill areas than behaviours.

The Recommendations are:

1. Create an employer-led Local Skills Accountability Framework and Board for Leicester and Leicestershire
2. Ensure a comprehensive vision for the Leicester and Leicestershire economy is understood and supported
3. Review curriculum design and delivery in line with the local Knowledge, Skills and Behaviour requirements of businesses as evidenced in the CISO
4. Develop a new structure to support greater collaboration among education and training providers
5. Ensure the needs of businesses are reflected in well-communicated local educators' offerings
6. Strengthen educator enrichment activities by linking these with wider place-building activity and funding streams
7. Coordinate Employer Representative Bodies to produce a common set of tools and resources for businesses to better engage with Educators and support Colleges to adopt best business practice
8. Create a new Local Continuing Professional Development Framework for Leicester and Leicestershire educators
9. Align Capital Investment and Funding applications with the future Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours requirements of business
10. Establish a Future Skills Unit for Leicester and Leicestershire

For the full Report and CISO Tool – click here Collective Intelligence Skills Observatory (insight-unlocked.co.uk)