Talk to anyone in the print industry about training and it's clear that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of an aging workforce and the de-skilling of the industry. Put quite simply, collectively we're brilliant at highlighting the faults of the industry's training provision, but when it comes to engaging at a company level, apathy seems to take over.
So, late last year, we hosted a roundtable discussion on training in the print industry with a group of printers, a print student and the industry's sector skills council. The discussions were extensive and wide-reaching and provide a real insight into the state of training in print as it stands.
At the table were:
Darryl Danielli PrintWeek editor
Bruce Carter Director of continuous improvement, CW Print
Kirk Galloway Director and general manager, Buxton Press
Richard Harnasz PrintWeek's 2009 Student of the Year
Mick Hart Print consultancy Thistlebank Graphics and regular printweek.com poster
Sam Neal Managing director, Geoff Neal Litho
Terry Watts Chief executive, Proskills UK Group - the parent organisation of the print industry's sector skills council and the National Skills Academy for Materials, Production & Supply
Darryl Danielli: I guess we should kick things off by asking Proskills what exactly it and the National Skills Academy (NSA) does for the print industry, as it still seems that far too many printers still haven't even heard of Proskills.
Terry Watts: When it comes to delivering training, the simple truth is that, tactically, we just haven't got the resources to do what we need to do. So, we have to work through intermediaries. The biggest problem we have is that the whole skill system in the UK is driven by the training providers, so further education (FE) colleges are disproportionately powerful. Their problem is that they're under increasing commercial pressures and that means they prefer to offer the courses that are relatively cheap and easy to deliver, rather than the sorts of things that industries, like print, need. The NSA's job is to try and steer the training providers to offer the things that industry needs.
DD: So opening that issue up to the room, what is the perception of print training in the UK?
Sam Neal: There just isn't much around and it's not really on the agenda for a lot of companies. I'll be honest, before I came here I hadn't heard of Proskills. That said, the biggest problem is getting new people into the industry. We run our own [unaccredited] apprenticeship scheme and we've put four through in the past two years - out of those, the longest lasting apprentice was nine months, before the attraction of being a parking warden lured him away. The difficulty is that we can't pay enough to keep them interested for long enough to complete an apprenticeship. They leave to work at Tesco or somewhere that will give them more money in their pocket from day one, even though once they're qualified they could eventually earn substantially more as a printer.
Kirk Galloway: That's the key area that's wrong. When we need to recruit, we will recruit specifically into that role. So rather than looking for say a graduate that has a wide spectrum of knowledge in all areas, we look for ‘the one' who already has many of the specific skills we need and then we budget for training if it's necessary. At the moment, we have 16 members of staff going through what you could call an apprenticeship. However, it's bloody expensive to train people.
SN: It's also difficult to find the time to train people, because they're actually ‘on the job' too. You can't allocate money in your job estimate to take into account that the folder, for example, will be operated by a trainee and he might not be as quick as an experienced operator. But we all know that the only way to learn print successfully is hands-on, on the machines.
Mick Hart: I think that highlights one of the other problems; the level of general industry skills are rapidly falling with many workers' depth of knowledge concentrated on only the task they're employed to carry out.
DD: If that's the case, it sounds like there is a need for the old-fashioned apprenticeships. Why don't they really exist anymore?
TW: There are apprenticeships. You get the impression that they are gone, but national occupational standards courses and qualifications exist. For example, the BPIF is looking for apprentices, but they can't find candidates.
KG: Maybe they do exist, but because a lot of the skills have been taken out of the job by technology, in reality the only staff that need the high level of knowledge about the machine or process are supervisors. The other problem is - and Sam touched on it when he talked about his apprentices leaving to work at Tesco or as a traffic warden - the average age of the print industry is say 48. Well, ours is 36. We have a very young workforce, which in itself is a problem, as young people are prepared to travel a lot further for work. So we end up finding that we have a higher turnover of staff nowadays because we give them a very good grounding and then they'll take those skills and our investment in them elsewhere.
Bruce Carter: That's partly because we're no longer a craft industry. We're a commodity and our workforce is transient. We still need levels of competency, but we only need a basic level that we can build on.
KG: I think it's worth saying that it's not just printers that are suffering from a lack of training, but the buying community too. As a result, the buyers are just buying on price - they have no skills anymore.
SN: There is a flip side to that. One of our clients maintains high print budgets for their DM because they can prove, measure and analyse the return on investment through response rates and other measures. But print managers have a lot to answer for because many of them are too focused on costs and often don't measure what the client gets out of the project. Not surprisingly, the consequence of a commodity-driven market is that you are completely de-skilling what you are doing.
BC: That's not just on the shop floor, but also on the management side. We all have MIS. Years ago we employed people who knew the process skills for costs and the capabilities of the press. Now you just put all that into an MIS and it comes up with a price. You don't need the skills because the MIS does it. The skills we need to focus on today are strategic management.
DD: We touched on the aging workforce problem earlier, what can we do to attract more young people into print?
Richard Harnasz: Ensuring that there are decent training and education opportunities would be a good start. You can only fit 14 people around a press - in fact, to get effective learning, I think it should be six people. But colleges and universities are run as businesses now, so if a course can't justify its costs by attracting, or being able to cope with, enough students, it's at risk. I know that there are rumours about the possible closure of my print school at London College of Communications and if nothing changes this year it could happen.
TW: I agree with Richard. Colleges closing print-related courses is a real worry. But also I don't think people have a real awareness of the industry as a possible career. We can reset that and we have through PrintIT!. Last year, we had 570 schools and 25,000 young people take part and we try to get printers to partner with a local school.
SN: A school approached us to bring the students down. We spoke to the BPIF about it and they said that we had no chance of bringing them in. We were told that it's a production environment and there's no way we can get a load of schoolchildren in here.
TW: But that's wrong. You can take them wherever you like provided they're well controlled, wearing hard hats and protected. You need to make some allowances, but there's nothing to stop you. They take kids to quarries and they blow up rocks, so I really can't see a problem taking them around a print shop!
DD: PrintIT! is a great initiative and there's no doubt that more printers need to get involved, but do we need to get back-to-basics, does more money need to be spent on formal industry qualifications and training, or should we be investing in on-the-job informal training, which at the moment it seems impossible to get funding for?
TW: People tell me they want highly skilled staff and a qualification is secondary. But the qualification tells you that you have a national standard.
BC: As an industry, I don't consider print to be any different to farming, food manufacturing or whatever. We need to attract competent or skilled people. With basic competency, you don't need industry-specific training. You don't need colleges - you need someone who understands computers, man management and strategic finance. You are just moving those skills across industries.
TW: But you do need skills in the print industry. I would not know where to start and I used to work in IT. I couldn't operate a litho press.
MH: I also think it's important to have as broad a knowledge base as possible about the industry.
RH: I agree that you need a broad spectrum. You need the skills before you can progress to management. If you've never swept the floor in a factory, how can you have a go at someone for not doing it quickly enough?
SN: But the problem is that most people don't want to get their hands dirty. That's not just in print, but in general. They just want to go straight into management. We need to make it ‘sexy' to get more people into colleges and stop them from closing. There is such a small pool of people going in. SMEs make up 85% of the industry and most have one person who started the company and dragged it along by their own willpower. In today's marketplace, just being a good printer doesn't cut it - you need a complete skill set now.
TW: Understandably, people's eyes are on the bottom line. But it's important to realise that two-thirds of companies that are training through the recession are more likely to survive it. Those are figures we have based on the last recession.
DD: I think Sam mentioned that one of his clients measures return on investment (ROI) to justify high-value DM campaigns. Have any of your measured the ROI of training, or thought about doing it?
SN: No. I don't measure it and I don't know how to. But we know the value of the best operators and we know what a real salesman can do and what value they can add. You don't need to measure it because the results speak for themselves.
DD: True, but surely Proskills needs to prove the value of training and communicate that?
TW: From our figures, there is a 20% difference between the effectiveness of a fully competent person versus a person not functioning. At a 100-staff company, that works out at £60,000. The average cost of a NVQ is £2,000, so clearly there is a business case to be made.
DD: But does the average staff member care about training?
SN: Most do. They know that if the company is struggling then they are going to struggle.
TW: You say that, but we work with unions and I have been to companies where it's all in place and no-one turns up. If you develop a training culture then that will change. Whatever their vocation, people want a career and it's in employers' interests to have an engaged employee, not someone who is just going through the motions.
BC: I think it's brilliant what Proskills is trying to do, but my criticism is that the majority of printers employ 10 people or fewer and those companies just don't have the HR structure to engage with training.
DD: That's the key issue really, isn't it? So to finish up, in a perfect world, what would our training infrastructure look like?
BC: I would like the training to come to me.
SN: I agree, it needs to be on-site and preferably in-house.
KG: We are all keen that staff are competent. When you buy a machine, staff get five days of intensive manufacturer training and that is funded by the company. Taking your key people and sending them away to the manufacturing facility works for us, but it's not a day release or reading a book, it's hands-on and that's important. But we would like some support. We need help putting skills back into the workforce.
TW: The theme seems to be about communication and concerted action. We need to raise awareness and improve the image of print to the public, government and agencies. But we have a problem getting engaged with the print industry and if we can't do that, we can't deliver on our commitment to the sector. The funding is available now for printers to invest in training, we just can't seem to get the printers to come and talk to us.
BC: Proskills isn't doing anything wrong, it's just the nature of the industry. What it boils down to is that you can't centralise a de-centralised industry like print and, unfortunately, I can't see that changing any time soon.
