The Department for Business Innovation and Skills recently announced that 50m in new funds would be made available to boost vocational skills and qualifications. But will printers benefit?
Mark Snee, managing director, Technoprint "Funding? To do what? To be ?delivered by whom? We need to restructure the whole system first. We need training providers to broker it. Then it has to be match-funded by business. What qualifications can we sign up for? This is the problem. There are a number of skilled people out there. If I set up a new business right now I am confident I could find very skilled employees out of work, why do we need to be spending funding on training up new people?"
John Charnock, m
anaging director, Print Research International "Printers are ?absolutely dreadful at helping ?themselves. Whether it is graduate trainee processes or any other scheme, they are not quick to step up. That includes asking for help from people who have experience. I think the BPIF should be putting together details of how to apply for this funding – what works, what doesn’t work. They need to help printers who want to take advantage of this, or any other funding. There is so much change in the industry, why would you not take advantage?"
Richard Anstock,
managing director, Nottingham Trade Finishers "The best way to train is in-house, but the problem then is that neither the employee nor the employer gets any recognition for it. It would be good to be able to access funding in order to provide people with relevant, up-to-date training in order to ensure consistent standards. An industry our size needs a structured training facility that everyone can access. We are thinking about taking an apprentice on, but it needs to be relevant training. A lot of the print colleges tend to be a couple of years out of date."
Mark Snee, managing director, Technoprint "Funding? To do what? To be ?delivered by whom? We need to restructure the whole system first. We need training providers to broker it. Then it has to be match-funded by business. What qualifications can we sign up for? This is the problem. There are a number of skilled people out there. If I set up a new business right now I am confident I could find very skilled employees out of work, why do we need to be spending funding on training up new people?"
John Charnock, managing director, Print Research International "Printers are ?absolutely dreadful at helping ?themselves. Whether it is graduate trainee processes or any other scheme, they are not quick to step up. That includes asking for help from people who have experience. I think the BPIF should be putting together details of how to apply for this funding – what works, what doesn’t work. They need to help printers who want to take advantage of this, or any other funding. There is so much change in the industry, why would you not take advantage?"
Richard Anstock, managing director, Nottingham Trade Finishers "The best way to train is in-house, but the problem then is that neither the employee nor the employer gets any recognition for it. It would be good to be able to access funding in order to provide people with relevant, up-to-date training in order to ensure consistent standards. An industry our size needs a structured training facility that everyone can access. We are thinking about taking an apprentice on, but it needs to be relevant training. A lot of the print colleges tend to be a couple of years out of date."
