THE SPONSOR
This round-table on training and skills was sponsored by The National Skills Academy
THE DELEGATES
Ray Snowdon Project director, National Skills Academy
Sue Maitland Finance and human resources director, Statexcolourprint
Bernard Rutter Head of learning and skills, Unite GPM Sector
Peter Arnel Chairman, BPIF technical standards committee, and managing director, White Horse Press
Terry Watts Chief executive, Proskills
Freddie Kienzler Managing director, Formara
Andy Bracey Operations manager south, BPIF Training
Nick Chalk Sector marketing manager commercial, Océ
Andrew Pindar Chairman, Pindar
Sue Pandit Dean of LCC’s School of Printing and Publishing
Sidney Bobb Chairman, BAPC
Catherine Hearn Chief operating officer, Polestar
Is it fair to say that we have skills shortages in the print industry? Is there a particular sector that struggles to recruit?
Peter Arnel I agree we have a problem attracting new entrants, but do we have a problem on the shop floor? I’m not aware of one. If I want a printer I can get one.
We do have difficulties attracting people into the print industry in the first place. People don’t see print as a very sexy industry. That’s reflected in the training situation and we need to do something to attract better people into the industry.
Sue Maitland There are many people who say they are printers and who come to work for us, but quite often they cannot meet our standards and we have to retrain them. They can get ink on paper, but they can’t get ink on paper to the standard required by our buyers.
Catherine Hearn I think we have a big problem in raising expectations of what people can do if they stay in the industry. There are various issues and we need to help give our print people IT and business skills, and help those who are not from print get to grips with the industry.
Does providing staff training help with staff retention?
Terry Watts The premise is that young people will be attracted to an industry if they can see a future and a career path for them. There’s lot of talk these days about people changing careers several times in their working lives, and people want to see where they can go. I think we need to show that there are careers out there in print and that they are relatively well paid.
Bernard Rutter Progression is a big challenge for the industry. It’s difficult to generalise because of the different size of organisations. However, recently someone was saying that lots of companies don’t even have a business plan let alone a progression plan.
There isn’t the natural progression there was – people aren’t leaving, which makes it difficult to see a way to go. We’ve got a big job on to attract young people to the industry. Companies have got to buy into it as well.
Are you saying that it’s not just the technical side of training that is a problem?
Andrew Pindar I think there is a massive problem with training in the industry and it’s not just about press operators. We recently had a struggle with team leader training with a lack of interest from staff in the training offered.
We are poor at creating business plans – some of the issues that members of Unite are subjected to are because management is not strong enough. The flip side of that is that some of the skills training is not good enough. If you do a comparison of our industry with our cousins in mainland Europe, you find we are lagging behind. For example, when we had young Danish printers work on our presses we found their level of skill higher than our press operators, but then again they are more committed to training.
As an industry we are far too reliant on manufacturers to supply training and we’re not looking to the print colleges as they used to be – they tended to be behind the times with old technology we were ahead of them and that was a problem.
Freddie Kienzler The biggest issue that we have is not so much a lack of technical skills, it’s other skills such as general business, supervisory and management skills. We are trying to source training for those areas. Historically we piggybacked on training schemes with our suppliers. Where they have arrangements for their own staff – if we are lucky – we have joined them for training at a reduced rate. To an extent we can give staff the technical skills over a period of time with the help of the manufacturers, but we’re absolutely stuffed when it comes to the other skills.
Is it a question of employers not placing enough value on training? And is there another issue – that of the affordability of training?
Sidney Bobb We often get phone calls from training organisations saying they can’t get people to go on courses because printers don’t see the value of it. Large companies have an infrastructure, but the average print company in the UK employs 15 or 16 people. They don’t need one fewer or one more and can’t see the benefit of releasing staff for training because they are small craft-based companies – they see themselves as manufacturing and blue collar workers.
Sue Pandit I talk to quite large print firms about the kind of training and education programmes we could provide their workforce on a day-release basis and apart from the fear of letting someone out for a day, printers also ask ‘why do we want to train these people when they’re just going to get up and leave?’
Peter Arnel We are small businesses and that’s the issue. I’m not going to put money into training. A manager won’t have time to look at training – they spend all their time on day-to-day functions and may have an accountant to look after the financials.
We’ve been talking to the BPIF about training clubs. I’m interested in getting together a group of about 165 printers so that one day a month we can get someone to come in and manage our training. I don’t want someone coming in every six months telling me what to do.
Sue Maitland We train young people leaving school, we train our staff and we’re delighted with adult apprenticeships. There are a lot of people who have got a lot to offer and can do a great job but were let down by school.
We’re a SME and have no training department, but I believe in it totally and I don’t believe in this line of ‘why should I train them as they’ll just leave?’ You haven’t got the right to keep people whether you train them or not. Hopefully, if you train them they will find the job so good they won’t want to leave.
Most of our managers are from the shop floor, but we’ve invested time; we’ve got people in to train and we have looked at training needs. We haven’t had a problem with take-up at all. It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time.
Does training need to be right for the role?
Sue Maitland It’s a positive start, but what we need to do now is get into the real world and start having some joined-up thinking on training, because it’s got to be a useful and applicable asset. You see many people who are good machine managers moved into a supervisory position with no training in how to deal with people, which creates issues that could have been dealt with if people had been taught the relevant skills.
Catherine Hearn The industry’s voluntary turnover is low, very low. In my own experience people stay if you train them because you are investing in them. The other issue for me is productivity. I absolutely believe that with the right sort of training we can increase productivity at the same time.
When you talk about benefits, are there any quantifiable results?
Catherine Hearn Yes, with things like continuous improvement you can measure results. Particularly if you think of the range of problems that people face in their working life and you find ways to solve them. You can actually put a benefit to firms in terms of time and cost savings and most financial directors would be persuaded by that. I think they are less persuaded by things that are softer, such as management skills. But I think you can attach a value to it.
Andrew Pindar We have had measurable success through working with Vision in Print (ViP), implementing lean manufacturing techniques. At the end of the day it is teaching people to run their lives and work better within a business. Lean manufacturing is a quantifiable way of improving the profitability of printing companies.
One of the things we have to is to find courses and modules that are applicable to people with small business, say with 10-15 employees.
Do we need to give an all-round skills base?
Bernard Rutter One of the things we’ve always supported in ViP is that it gets the employees to buy in and involves them in the process. What it’s doing is taking the skills and knowledge people already have and brings them in as part of the process. I think ViP is a really good model for how companies should look to work with their employees in regard to training.
Catherine Hearn I think it’s important not to put these things into silos, where this is something that is ViP or business improvement or technology training or something else tomorrow. For me an NVQ Level 3 for a printer is okay, but it is improved if you bolt on other things to it and get something that has breadth in terms of the bigger picture of a career, and not just the particular skills related to being a printer.
Andrew Pindar What we need is to run our businesses better. It’s the business planning and looking at the skills and training needs of everybody in the organisation, not just thinking that a dollop of lean manufacturing is going to solve all ills. If you start from the premise that everyone, from the shop floor through to the chairman, is under-skilled and under-trained, then we need to ask how do we address that? There’s a bigger conversation to be had with government about that.
Freddie Kienzler It’s perhaps easier for a company of Pindar’s size. We employ 45 staff – when can we spare people for training? Those people are split into different departments and everyone has six weeks’ holiday, so we are always one short in every department at any one time. So it does have a serious impact when you take one more out of the five that you’ve got working. Because our numbers are small in each department, we never have enough to make up a course on something, so it’s difficult. We might want one person trained in one skill and the next week someone else in another skill so we’ve got to find people who are running these courses all the time. What can I do if I’ve just promoted somebody and they need that training?
Peter Arnel If there are 15 printing firms together you might be able to organise something. We used to do it, and for small printers that may be the way forward.
Terry Watts I think actually you’re making a good case for the academy. One of the things that was in the plans for the academy was what we call ‘training consortia’. They are print training clubs and that’s something that we continue to develop.
Sidney Bobb There is a suspicion about training. I think if you look at the profile of people who own printing businesses – let’s forget about the large organisations for now – they tend to be about 48 years old and tend to come from a print background. Often they left school without any formal qualifications themselves. They are unaware of the benefits that formal education can provide, so how can you expect them to understand how the people who work for them can benefit from training?
TRAINING PROVISION
Employer-led initiatives
It is clear from this recent, frank exchange of views that delivering appropriate and comprehensive training to the print sector will be a challenging task.
The National Skills Academy for Materials, Production & Supply (NSAMPS) is being established to promote access to industry-specific, quality-assured training in the process and manufacturing sector, including the print industries. It is supported by Proskills, the Sector Skills Council, and will support employers and employees across print nationwide, whatever their size and location.
There will need to be appropriate vision and leadership to carry through ideas to fruition. Ray Snowdon, project director for the National Skills Academy, welcomed the round-table discussion as a healthy start to dialogue.
“There is a clear recognition that training and developing a highly-skilled – and increasingly multi-skilled – workforce is essential and turning a vision into reality will require employers, equipment manufacturers, unions, training providers, Proskills and the academy to work in close partnership.
“The academy funding links monies from the National LSC, RDAs, industry sponsors and employers providing the potential to draw down further significant revenue and capital money in the development process - a cocktail approaching £1m per year,” says Snowdon.
The academy is submitting a business plan at the end of April to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and, if successful, this would enable it to plan its programme in the second half of 2008 and open its doors in January 2009.
