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How skills and training help retain top talent

Blog

Sam Whitear

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17/05/2022

How skills and training help retain top talent

Dawn Duggan, Head of People, Skills and Talent at GC Business Growth Hub, and responsible for the delivery of the Hub’s Skills for Growth – SME Support programme shares her top tips on how skills and training help retain top talent.

Recruiting talent is a battle, but how do you hold on to your staff once you’ve recruited them? As the so-called ‘great resignation’ rages on, a majority 60% of employees plan to leave their jobs in 2022, with the main reasons for change cited as lack of recognition and sense of belonging.

According to CIPD, enabling career development and progression is one of the key aspects shown to improve rates of employee retention. Further to that end, according to the Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2020, employees’ intentions to remain with their employer increase when businesses address employee needs such as reskilling.

Is there a link between retention and skill development? How does this lead to employees feeling recognised and that they belong in their place of employment? Let’s find out.

Empowering Employees

Your staff want to feel valued, recognised, and relied upon, its human nature, we want to feel wanted.

By providing ongoing training and development for your employees, you can help deliver that feeling by demonstrating your investment in their future, namely, their future within your organisation. Adding new skills to their arsenal that they can then pass on to others or use to further develop within their role or their wider career gives the individual a sense of empowerment, demonstrating the employer’s commitment to a stable and ongoing position for them within the business.

Giving your staff room to grow

People who are engaged with their workplace and excited by their role tend to stay where they are for longer, but the reverse is also true in that those who feel disconnected from development opportunities tend to feel less engaged and are more likely to leave. Offering attractive, role specific training can help to ensure that your staff feel challenged and motivated, and can visualise their future career progress within the company. And further to that, by offering, we don’t mean having a set list of compulsory health and safety modules for your staff to complete, we mean truly offering an array of relevant training courses that would be of genuine use and interest to the individual.

By giving your staff room to grow and encouraging them to take control of the skills they want to work on, you effectively remove any need to seek personal development elsewhere.

Developing confidence

Developing new skills and knowledge can help your staff to become more innovative, more productive, and more resourceful.

Rather than feeling that they’ve hit the glass ceiling or that they are lacking in comparison to their colleagues, education can help to improve staff confidence and self-esteem by enabling them to manage tasks more effectively, take control of challenges, and to help others in their role. Employees who feel confident in their role are more likely to communicate more effectively, improve their decision-making and handle criticism and feedback constructively. They say knowledge is power, and we couldn’t agree more.

Offering quality education and training to your team can help empower employees, give individuals room to grow and develop staff confidence, which in turn give them a sense of belonging, recognition, and engagement.

While education is just one of many contributing factors to reducing staff turnover, we feel strongly that it is one of the most important elements, helping employers to retain top performing staff for longer and to develop extensive and meaningful career pathways for junior staff.

In 2020 the Hub successfully launched its Skills for Growth – SME Support programme. Commissioned by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and funded through the European Social Fund (ESF), this fully funded programme aims to support over 4000 SMEs and 17,000 individuals and is delivered in partnership with the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce (GMCC).

Skills for Growth – SME Support is here to help you grow your business by defining your business growth objectives, identifying workforce skills gaps and putting a plan in place to develop your talent and enhance your team’s performance.

If you are a business owner or manager looking to develop new skills and knowledge within your team, or in your own role, click here to apply for the fully funded Skills for Growth – SME support service.

About the author

dawn duggan 300x200 1 Dawn Duggan

Dawn has been with the Business Growth Hub since September 2014 and is responsible for the design, delivery and evaluation of the People, Skills & Talent Programme which include the Executive Development Programme, Workforce Development, Inclusive Growth, Mentoring, National Be the Business Mentoring for Growth Programme and Skills for Growth – SME Support.

Creating an Inclusive Hiring Strategy

Sam Whitear

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17/05/2022

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Creating an inclusive hiring strategy will allow you to gain a better understanding of your organisations’ needs and provides you with the foresight to be able to choose the best people to bring into your business. Skills for Growth – SME Support have collaborated with colleague Matt Richardson, Social Value at The Growth Company, to bring you expert tips on diversifying your team through effective, inclusive hiring, alongside the training available to help you build the necessary skills to deliver your strategy.

Planning and Preparation

Create an Inclusive Workplace Culture First

You may be proactive in your recruitment practices, but people are not going to stay if this is not embedded within the organisation. Therefore, you should look at developing an inclusive workplace culture before diversifying your hiring strategy, this way, new employees from minority backgrounds will immediately feel welcomed and feel a sense of belonging within the organisation.

Analyse Your Current Workforce

If a vacancy becomes available or you are creating a new role, before you move into that stage, it is worthwhile reviewing the skills sets you have in your organisation and any potential gaps. Understanding the skills and experience needed will help the recruitment process run smoother. We often see organisations lose a member of staff and quickly look to replace that person like for like, this may still be the case, but it is always worth reviewing against your business’ overarching goals before you progress in case there may be a different route to go down.

Optimise Your Job Listings

Optimising your job descriptions will also help make the hiring process run smoother. To improve your job descriptions, try to remove as many acronyms as possible as these will only confuse potential candidates and put them off applying for the job. Try to also use inclusive language throughout as to not make any potential candidates feel excluded from the job or your company. This includes only asking a person’s age, if necessary, not using language that suggests conditions or disabilities being a barrier, don’t use terms that can be linked to harmful stereotypes and assumptions in relation to race and ethnicity. For more information about using inclusive language, you can utilise this government resource Inclusive language – Home Office Design System. Further to incorporating inclusive language into your job descriptions, also mention what your business currently does to promote and embed diversity and inclusion within the workplace.

If possible, also include that your business can offer flexible and agile working to cater to people with other responsibilities outside of work. On top of this, make any important disclosures about the job clear and clarify that any requests for additional support is taken into consideration as part of the recruitment process.

Diversify Where Your Job Listings Are Seen

It is easy to rely on platforms such as LinkedIn and Indeed to advertise vacancies, but not everyone has access to these platforms. Social issues such as the digital divide mean that not everyone has the facilities to properly utilise these platforms. For these people, job listings exclusively listed on these type of platforms puts a barrier between them and access to work, making it much harder for them to find a job to make a better life for themselves. Try to target those in minority groups by promoting across various networks such as LGBTQ+ networks or share job listings with colleges and Universities if relevant to drive applications from young people. By diversifying where your job listings are being seen and bringing people from marginalised communities into your organisation, you can work collaboratively to help shape and improve the culture of your organisation.

Engaging with candidates

Create a Relaxed Interview Environment

It is difficult to act naturally when you feel like you are being examined and inspected by someone. Therefore, if you want to see someone’s true personality when interviewing them, it is important to conduct the interview in a relaxed environment. Try not to create the feeling of an ‘us and them’ situation, instead be more friendly by engaging in small talk, ask follow-up questions, be clear on what the interviewee should expect during the interview, allow time for questions, and give honest feedback.

Provide Feedback

On the topic of feedback, it is important to remember and be considerate of the fact that applicants are taking time out of their day to be interviewed by you which for many will mean taking annual leave, unpaid leave or changing homelife arrangements for them to be there. To respect them for making time to attend the interview, let them know what they did well and what areas they can improve on, so they are still able to take some value out of the interview.

“Feedback is such a crucial part of people’s development and, if like me, take value from being told of areas to work on or where the successful candidate had just pipped you to the post. These experiences over time have helped me better understand what recruitment teams may be looking for, what questions to ask and ensure I take that feedback and aim to improve in my next interview. There is often a nervousness about giving feedback, but I can assure you providing no feedback doesn’t help either, as the interviewer does not build confidence in giving feedback and the interviewee has no external perspective of how they can develop.” – Matt Richardson, Social Value Lead at The Growth Company

Interview Process

Use the interview process to get the best possible picture of applicants by including different activities such as tasks, scenario-based questions, presentations and potentially group activities to help give a more rounded understanding of the interviewee. Recruitment is a costly process and doing this due diligence in the first part can save a lot of resources in the medium/long term. To make the process as fair as possible, provide inclusive training and standardised question templates for hiring managers to reduce bias and ensure a fair and consistent process.

Accessing training

GM Skills Map

With all the above in mind, you may wish to further develop your skills through workplace learning and training to effectively enact all that we’ve considered in this article. Skills for Growth SME Support’s GM Skills Map platform allows businesses to search and monitor learning all in one place, from top training providers in Greater Manchester and beyond. Below are popular courses to help you create and deliver a successful, inclusive hiring strategy.

Human Resources

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion

Communication

For further support maximising growth opportunities and reshaping your workforce through training and development, click here to leave your details and receive a call back from a Skills Coach, or call Skills for Growth – SME Support today on 0161 237 4444.

About the author

Matt Richardson 300x220 1 Matt Richardson

Matt is the Social Value Lead at the Growth Company, an award-winning social enterprise that drives economic growth through business support, skills development and employment. As the Social Value Lead, Matt is a member of the GM Social Value Steering Group alongside his role of network member within the Social Enterprise Action Group. Matt also leads the Social Value team within the Business Growth Hub that providers fully-funded business support to GM-based organisations on how to identify, generate, monitor and report on social impact.

Easy ways to learn how to code

Thought Leaders

Sam Whitear

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11/05/2022

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It’s no secret that tech job roles come with hefty salaries. If you’re wondering how to beat the rising inflation rates and secure yourself a few pennies, you may be considering learning how to code.

If so, you’re in luck! Learning to code requires a little time, effort and patience. But, there are some things you can do to make learning how to code a touch easier. To help you become the next tech mogul, we’re rounded up some helpful tips below.

Learning to code: tips and tricks

1. Learn coding physically rather than theoretically

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you need to read textbook after textbook to learn how to code. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, evidence shows that you need to learn to code by doing. When you write your code, play with it and tweak it every day, you’ll learn coding as you go, picking things up along the way.

2. Online resources are your friend

If you’re a coding novice, then you’ll want to make use of the online resources available to you. Whether you subscribe to YouTube channels for real-time walk throughs, try an online course or simply read some helpful blogs, you’ll find yourself doing far less head-scratching when you utilize the online resources out there.

3. Take breaks

As coding takes a lot of brain power, it’s important to take breaks. Although you may want to accelerate your learning and sit there for hours, it’s best to tackle coding in short, sharp bursts.

If you start to feel yourself flagging or getting frustrated, take a short break and come back to it later.

Can anyone learn how to code?

If you think that coding is reserved for the naturally gifted tech wizzes of the world, think again!

Whether you’ve dabbled in coding before or you’re a complete novice, virtually anyone can learn to code with the right equipment, environment and patience.

Although learning how to code does come more easily to some people, anyone can learn this in-demand skill. And for those that persist, learning to code can be life-changing.

What are the career benefits of learning to code?

If you do manage to persist with coding, the effects on your career can be huge. Just some of the benefits of learning to code include:

Greater earning potential – As tech jobs tend to pay well, learning to code can mean you reap the rewards financially.
Job security – Tech jobs are in high demand due to a skills shortage. By learning to code, you can ensure you’re highly employable with plenty of career opportunities.
Enhanced problem solving – Even if you don’t fancy a career at Apple or Google, the problem-solving skills you’ve learned can increase your chances of success in your current role.
Career flexibility – Given that we live in a digital world, learning how to code opens your career up to a wealth of opportunities.

In conclusion…

Learning how to code can seem daunting at first. But the good news is that anyone can learn to code if you follow the simple tips above. So go on, give it a go!

What to Look for When Choosing a Web Design Agency for Your Business

Thought Leaders

Sam Whitear

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10/05/2022

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What to Look for When Choosing a Web Design Agency for Your Business

If you own a business, then you probably already know that in today’s digital age, having a website is an essential. A website provides your customers with somewhere that they can go to get information on your company along with allowing you to showcase your products and services and provide easy contact information for visitors. If you want a professional website for your business, then the best step is to work with a good web design agency. Here are some of the main things to look out for when choosing the right web design agency choosing the right web design agency for you.

Why Work with a Web Design Agency?

Web design agencies will usually be hired by companies that are looking to build, update, redesign, maintain, or optimise a website for search engines. They will usually have web designers and developers who can create the layout for the website and manage all aspects of the design. Choosing the right web design agency can have a huge impact on your business, with surveys showing that almost 40% of users will judge a website by the first impression of its appearance.

Creative Thinking

One of the key things to look out for when you are choosing a web design agency is creative thinking. A good web development service in Birmingham will be able to think creatively and outside of the box when it comes to your website. Check their portfolio and look for an agency that doesn’t rely heavily on old design cliches but comes up with new and original ideas for their clients that reflects each unique business. Check out their own website – do they use creative layouts and designs? Are there any interesting and unique features?

Technical Skills and Know-How

A good web design company should have a lot of technical expertise, as you will be trusting them to get great results for your website by making the most of the latest web technologies. They should be able to utilise the latest technologies and design trends while easily creating websites that are responsive and work well on any device. They should also have expertise in and experience with different web design platforms and technologies in order to enable them to create a website that is tailored to your needs and requirements.

Range of Services

When choosing a web design agency, it’s important to check the different services that they offer. Ideally, they should offer a wide range of services that will enable them to meet all your requirements and needs. A good web design agency should offer a variety of different services variety of different services alongside web design and development such as SEO, app development, digital marketing, website maintenance, and branding. This allows you to easily ensure that all your company’s web design needs can be met in the same place without the need to work with several different companies.

As a business owner, you know that having a professional and well-built website can make all the difference to your success. When searching for the right web design agency to do this for you, these are just some of the most important things to look for.

Six & Flow notches up record results and predicts revenues will hit £3.7m this financial year.

Growth

Sam Whitear

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10/05/2022

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Six & Flow notches up record results and predicts revenues will hit £3.7m this financial year.

Six & Flow – the Manchester-headquartered growth agency – has reported record results for the last financial year after securing revenues of £1,962,000 which is up 71% from the previous twelve months. It is predicting revenues in excess of £3.7m for this financial year.

Established in 2015, Six & Flow also has bases in London, Dublin, Toronto and South Africa. Its 40-strong team are growth experts and deliver inbound marketing, conversational marketing, sales enablement and enterprise CRM implementation. Its core focus is on helping organisations grow their brand, audience and revenue.

It has a diverse roster of B2B tech, SaaS and professional services clients who operate in various sectors including marketing tech, fintech, recruitment tech and health tech. Longstanding clients include AdRoll, UKMail and Phaidon International.

The Six & Flow team also drives a client enablement strategy meaning that clients of the agency are equipped with the knowledge and skills to maximise their own sales, marketing and revenue operations thanks to a carefully curated and bespoke mix of Strategy, Implementation and Training services.

Over the past 12 months, the company has made a number of senior appointments to drive its growth plans including Jaeger Dyble, who joined as Head of Client Services; and Nicole Sengers, who was named Head of Delivery. Nicole is located at the agency’s hub in Johannesburg,

In 2021, the firm grew its headcount by 12 and onboarded 273 new clients both in Europe and North America.

Rich Wood, managing director of Six & Flow, said: “Like all businesses, we had to adapt quickly to the pandemic. The past two years has been a period of evolution for the business but our focus has never shifted away from being about delivering growth for our clients first and foremost. These record results are testament to our collective efforts and dedication.

Rich added: “Although we were founded in Manchester, Six & Flow is truly an international business with clients and members of the team located in multiple territories and markets. That approach has paid real dividends for us and will continue to be our strategy moving forward.”

Could your project team benefit from a shift in workplace learning culture

Thought Leaders

Sam Whitear

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09/05/2022

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Could your project team benefit from a shift in workplace learning culture

If each of the members of your team is aligned with the goals of your business, then you are well on your way to success. It is important that you are fully conversant with your company values, your product, customer base, mission, structure and conventions, amongst other things. The problem – if you are a growing organisation – is how do you make sure that every member of staff is being given the knowledge that they need? This is where the right workplace learning culture can really pay off.

Developing the right learning culture in the workplace requires some time and effort, but when this is put in place, the long-term result is that it can deliver.

What is a workplace learning culture?

A learning culture refers to the strong emphasis that a business might put on actively working to make sure that employees are conversant with its values, practises, skill sets, beliefs, and conventions. This makes sure that all employees can gain the abilities and knowledge that they require if they are to perform to the best of their ability, make sure that customers are happy and help your business to grow.

Why is a workplace learning culture important?

A learning culture can have an impact on every area of your company’s business, from your productivity to your retention levels. A recent study recent study that looked at the value that might be had from employee training indicated that 84% of employees in those organisations that performed the best are receiving training. This was in comparison to just 16% in those companies considered to be the worst-performing. In addition, another study found that 94% of employees felt that when the company they worked for invested in development and training, this was more likely to make them stay in the role for longer. This is why a good workplace learning culture is so important. It helps your business to grow.

How can you build a learning culture?

The first step towards building a learning culture is to look at anything that you already have in place and see where there are weaknesses and learning gaps. In order to initiate a great learning culture, you need to critically analyse what you already have and build it back up better. Research how you can improve what you are already doing and create a strategy that will help you to do this.

1. Plan what you want your employees to learn

Some of the learning you do will be more informal, but you should still have a structure for any formal learning you want to put in place. This might be things like codes of conduct or product knowledge training – these are things that you will need to plan in full detail so your employees can undertake the learning they need.

This will help you to put a baseline in place across your business that will ensure that everyone has access to the same resources, and this will allow you to measure the impact.

2. Empower any subject matter experts

One big problem many businesses encounter is how to give the information they have to their employees. When you use a subject matter expert, they will be able to put together relevant content for your employees.

3. Ask your employees what they want to learn

Your employees are a vital part of your business, so consult with them about your workplace learning culture. They may have some ideas that you hadn’t thought about.

4. Ensure training is accessible

Make your training easy to access, or your employees just won’t want to do it. This should not only be easy to access but user friendly and well thought out. Give them plenty of notice of the types of training you will be running.

5. Make learning a top priority

If you want to build a learning culture that your project team can really benefit from, then you need to make sure it is part of the workplace routine from the day people start. Training should be offered from the beginning. This could be courses, mentoring, and anything else you feel they might need and one important thing you will learn during training for project managers training for project managers is that you need to ensure that you set aside time, no matter how busy you are, to ensure that this happens.

You should also think about different learning methods that could work for you. Remember, different people learn in different ways, so mixing a range of different methods will help you to provide a better learning culture that will help more employees.

6. Create a resources library

Collating a collection of resources will help you to have something for your employees whenever they need it. You can choose how you collect all of the information you want in the library, ensuring that it is the most useful format for your company.

Other things you may want to consider in order to create a great workplace learning culture include:

• Integrating learning into everyday work life

• Make learning a more social event

• Make learning fun

• Ensure that you actively promote learning

• Make knowledge sharing a habit

• Reward learning

• Keep the learning process continuous

• Ensure that leadership is linked to the learning culture

• Offer feedback

In short, the simple answer is that if you put the right work in, then a workplace learning culture can be a truly wonderful thing for your organisation. But you do have to put the work in to ensure that what you are offering actually adds value, do not just put together a few quick training sessions and think that they will suffice on their own. Use some of those project management qualifications project management qualifications to help you plan out exactly what you want to deliver. You may find that this is one of those tasks that you can use software geared towards project management software geared towards project management to help you ensure you have everything you want in place.

Will House Prices Go Down in 2022?

Thought Leaders

Sam Whitear

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05/05/2022

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If you’re thinking of buying a home anytime soon, one of the biggest questions you may be asking is, ‘Will house prices go down in 2022?’

In this article, we’ll look at recent events and trends in the housing market and the factors that have contributed to the current situation with house prices. We’ll also take a look at predictions about whether or not house prices will be going down in the near future.

What happened to house prices last year?

Firstly, it’s important to understand what has been happening with house prices up to now and why.

House prices rose considerably in 2021, with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reporting a 10.9% increase from the previous year.

This rise is a result of multiple factors, including the impact of COVID-19 on the housing market. At the start of the pandemic, the housing market slowed as many people put their search for a new home on hold. However, once restrictions began to ease, there was an increased demand for properties and a shortage of supply, which resulted in higher asking prices. Chinneck Shaw Estate Agents can help navigate this changing market and find the perfect home for you.

In addition to this, the UK government launched initiatives to help the market recover, such as the stamp duty holiday, which meant that buyers could make tax savings if they bought a property between summer 2020 and September 2021. This prompted many potential buyers to bring forward their property purchases in order to take advantage of the financial savings on offer.

How has this impacted conveyancing times?

Conveyancing is the legal process of buying a property, which begins after you have made an offer. It involves instructing a solicitor (conveyancer) to undertake all the necessary checks and paperwork involved to make your house purchase legal.

This typically takes around 12-16 weeks, however, due to the changes in the housing market and rapidly increasing number of house sales, conveyancing times have also been impacted, slowing down the home-buying process for many buyers.

Where is the housing market heading?

General uncertainty around the UK economy is contributing to uncertainty around the future of house prices.

With most UK households facing rising living costs, many may be put off making big financial decisions and long-term commitments, such as moving house or taking out a mortgage, for example. If fewer people are looking to buy property in 2022 and beyond, this could cause housing prices to plateau.

On the other hand, generally speaking, the majority of people choose to prioritise their housing payments over any other outgoings, due to the risk of homelessness if they don’t. So even with utilities and grocery bills rising, people tend to keep up with mortgage payments providing they continue to have an income, even if it means a need to be more frugal in other areas of their lives.

There is also a human element to consider as the limited supply and increased demand for property may make buyers wanting to get on the housing ladder feel desperate, and this sense of panic can spread and lead to further demand.

In summary, there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the housing market and what might happen to property prices in the near future. As a result, whether or not house prices will go down in 2022 very much remains to be seen.

Skills for Growth – SME Support programme helps more than 1,600 Greater Manchester businesses in first 18 months

Business support

Sam Whitear

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25/04/2022

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Skills for Growth – SME Support programme helps more than 1,600 Greater Manchester businesses in first 18 months

More than 1,600 Greater Manchester businesses and 2,500 people have been helped in the first 18 months of a programme looking to help businesses across the city-region to upskill and re-skill their employees.

GC Business Growth Hub in partnership with Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce launched Skills for Growth – SME Support in October 2020 after receiving funding from Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) as part of its three-year Skills for Growth programme, funded through the European Social Fund.

The fully funded business support programme isdesigned to help Greater Manchester SME’s achieve their growth ambitions through workforce development.

Since its inception, Skills for Growth – SME Support hasalready supported 1,663 businesses and 2,578individuals to undertake training and development across a range of disciplines including leadership and management, sales and marketing, IT and ecommerce and social care.

Firms accepted on the programme benefit from up to six months support, working alongside a dedicated Skills Coach, who provides an in-depth business diagnostic and workforce development plan tailored to achieve the business’ growth ambitions as well as being further supported to create personal employee development plans and help in finding suitable training courses.

Alongside this, business leaders can also accessspecialist support through apprenticeship and health and wellbeing advisors.

The programme has also helped 112 people to embark on an apprenticeship and a further 626 businesses have been referred for health and wellbeing support, helping them to understand the personal needs of their employees and tackle the productivity challenges that come with having a disengaged and disconnected workforce.

Councillor Bev Craig, Greater Manchester’s lead for Work, Skills, Education, Apprenticeships and Digital said: “We know that there are many inspiring start-ups, innovators and businesses across the city-region doing exciting things.

“The Skills for Growth programme is committed to supporting Greater Manchester’s entrepreneurs to develop their businesses through fully-funded training opportunities and it’s thanks to the specialist and bespoke guidance provided by SME Support that so many businesses have been able to make tangible changes and reap the benefits.

“This truly-employer led programme responds to the needs of businesses by plugging skills gaps they themselves have identified, which leads to increased productivity, boosted morale and higher staff retention.

“Our Skills for Growth family is continuing to grow and we now have a healthy provider network delivering vital training that is shaped by employers to identify pathways to progression and help businesses to thrive.”

Cheadle based business, Fresh Approach UK, ,engaged with Skills for Growth – SME Support and hassince seen staff undertake 96 training courses which have helped to create four new jobs, increase productivity by 20% and make £18,000 in savings from part and fully funded training. (full case study below).

Kelly Humphreys, Head of Support, Fresh Approach UK, said: “We’ve had a great experience with the Growth Company, accessing funded training for over half our team.

“We would not have been able to offer this number or variety of training to the team without the support of the team at Skills for Growth – SME Support or the funding towards training.”

A key part of the programme is GM Skills Map, a vital online resource pulling together commissioned provision as part of the wider Skills for Growth programme as well as other training opportunities available to businesses and individuals in Greater Manchester.

The resource was created to act as a ‘one stop shop’, making navigating the skills system much easier for employers and learners.

Currently the directory holds information from over 200training providers including top universities, colleges and commercial organisations and lists more than 2,000different training courses, as well as 457 apprenticeship programmes.

The resource is open to all SMEs in Greater Manchesterbut for full access, businesses must be registered on the programme.

Dawn Duggan, Head of People Skills and Talent – GC Business Growth Hub, said: “Skills for Growth is all about helping SMEs in Greater Manchester to grow by identifying skills gaps and we’re really pleased with the success so far.

“We’ve had a really strong response both in terms of the number of businesses and people we have helped. It’s really pleasing to see how the support has helped businesses and people to develop new skills and the positive business impacts that have been achieved as a result.

“We know the last couple of years have been tough for businesses and hope that this support is helping them to develop, grow and futureproof in these challenging circumstances. These challenges are just beginning for many companies and we are looking forward to continuing to support businesses to get the skills they need as we move forward.

“Places on the Skills for Growth – SME Support programme are available for a limited time only, so we would encourage interested businesses to apply online now at www.skillsforgrowthsme.co.ukto avoid disappointment.”

Skills for Growth is a three-year programme, which has been developed to build a collaborative relationship between employers and the Greater Manchester skills system.

Following robust engagement with employers by GMCA and through the work GC Business Growth Hub is delivering to support SME’s, skills gaps in key sectors have been identified leading to bespoke, fully fundedtraining to support the city-region’s workforce to thrive.

Some sectors this work is already taking place includedigital, construction, low carbon and retrofit, health and social care, hospitality and manufacturing.

Businesses that are interested in applying for the Skills for Growth – SME Support programme can find out more here: www.skillsforgrowthsme.co.uk

For information about the wider programme, please visit www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/skillsforgrowth.

Fresh Approach UK – Case Study

Fresh Approach UK started working with their dedicated skills coach Dom Kinsella in March 2021, as it looked to grow and provide a range of training operations for its employees.

The events agency has utilised Skills for Growth – SME Support to bring a range of benefits to the company and its employees.

Through Skills for Growth – SME Support, Fresh Approach was able to develop individual skills development plans for 56 employees that helped them to identify a range of needs and skills gaps, used the GM Skills Map to source and monitor more than 150 courses and also worked with a health and wellbeing specialist.

Thanks to this support the company was able to create four new jobs, save £18,000 through fully funded and subsidised training and improve productivity by 20%.

Amongst the courses undertaken by employees at Fresh Approach Ltd a number were delivered by The Growth Company’s Education and Skills team, including certificates in ‘Principles of team leading’, ‘Lean organisational management techniques’ and ‘Principles of business administration’.

Kelly Humphreys, Head of Support, Fresh Approach UK, said: “We’ve had a great experience with the Growth Company, accessing funded training for over half our team, on a total of 96 courses.

“The support has been great, and Dom has always been on hand when we’ve needed help. We would not have been able to offer this number or variety of training to the team without the support of the team at Skills for Growth SME Support or the funding towards training.

“This has meant we’ve been able to run additional sessions within the same training budget. The online course finder has been useful and meant we could explore the options first and match these to individuals. We will continue to work with the Growth Hub as we grow our training provision into 2022.”

Dominic Kinsella, Growth Company Skills Coach, said: “The whole team at Fresh Approach really took advantage of the programme and fully engaged with the benefits and support available.

“They engaged really well in the training and it is great to see that they have reaped the benefits of doing so.

“Kelly was a pleasure to work with and really engaged her staff and pushed the training through as she saw how important it was for their personal development and to give them the opportunity to grow.

“I look forward to seeing how their staff can continue to progress and how the company can continue to expand and grow.”

Press release: Tech recruiter hits record £1m revenue

Tech

Sam Whitear

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14/04/2022

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Press release: Tech recruiter hits record £1m revenue

CEO Jack Donohue launched Knutsford-based Fairmont Recruitment in April 2018 with the aim of disrupting a sector with a reputation for working long hours and being slow to adopt new technology.

At the height of the pandemic he changed to a four-day week to protect his staff’s mental health and wellbeing and said it’s the best decision he’s ever made.

Fairmont Recruitment has grown to nine staff and is on course to hit a record £1.3m turnover for the 12 months to the end of April.

The company wants to grow to 20 staff inside 18 months and is looking to expand into the US market.

Donohue said: “The last four years have been a real rollercoaster because of Covid but I just want to thank the staff, clients and candidates for enabling us to reach this milestone.

“Recruitment is an old industry and when I launched Fairmont I wanted to move away from the perception that recruiters had to be chained to their desk for 12 hours a day to make any money. You can have a better work / life balance and still provide a first class service to your clients.”

The 30-year-old credited the company’s success to switching to a four-day week last year and hiring a senior management team at the start.

“Andy Ward, Mark Pugh and Wayne Bennett all joined as directors at the start and between us we have more than 50 years’ experience in the recruitment industry,” said Donohue.

“Bringing in a senior leadership team in first and foremost rather than build a senior leadership team around a growing business was one of the best things we did.

“The other thing was switching to a Monday-Thursday working week. I was worried about staff being burnt out and I live my life by the motto ‘work smarter, not harder’.

“There are enough hours in the working day to get your stuff done so we took the plunge in July 2021 to switch to four days with no deduction in salary. The change has been transformational.”

Donohue said hitting £1.3m turnover is all the remarkable because of the impact of Covid.

“Like everybody else I panicked at the beginning,” he said. “The business literally stopped overnight but we dusted ourselves down, took any opportunities that presented themselves and we’ve come out the other side a stronger business.

“We’ve invested heavily in tech, which has allowed our staff to go to a four-day week. Recruitment is an old school industry but there’s a lot of new technology you can plug in to allow your staff to focus on the really important work.

“Although the recruitment market is buoyant at the moment that presents its own challenges because it’s also very competitive. It’s the reason why we’re working harder with our clients and our candidates than we’ve ever done.”

Bergerode Consulting becomes a Maritime Cyber Baseline Certification Body

Sam Whitear

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14/04/2022

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Bergerode Consulting becomes a Maritime Cyber Baseline Certification Body

Bergerode Consulting has become one of the first certification bodies for the new Maritime Cyber Baseline standard. This new standard has been developed by the IASME Consortium, which manages the Cyber Essentials scheme, together with InfoSec Partners Ltd. and the Royal Institution of Naval Architects to raise cyber security standards within the maritime sector. The baseline is aimed at commercial vessels, especially cargo, passenger ferries, yachts, and also covers crewed and autonomous vessels.

Kevin Crichton, Bergerode’s CEO, said: “We’re very proud and excited to be one of the first certification bodies for the Maritime Cyber Baseline, and look forward to working with clients on this. Cyber security within the maritime sector has traditionally received less attention than its shoreside counterparts, but the maritime sector’s increasing reliance upon computerised systems and networks, places it at an ever-increasing risk of cyber-attack, especially from ransomware. You only have to consider that in 2017 the commercial shipping giant Maersk lost an estimated $300 million in revenue due to the “NotPetya” ransomware attack to appreciate how devastating a cyber-attack on the maritime sector can be. The maritime sector transports 95% of the UK’s imports and exports, so it’s crucial that the maritime sector takes proactive steps to remain cyber resilient, not only for its own sake, but also for the continued security of the UK’s supply chain. Bergerode Consulting strongly recommends that maritime companies review the new baseline and get in touch to discuss implementing it for their shipping fleet and implementing Cyber Essentials for their shoreside operations to ensure that this also remains cyber secure.”

To find out more visit http://www.bergerode.consulting/http://www.bergerode.consulting/

Dawn Duggan, Head of People, Skills and Talent at GC Business Growth Hub, and responsible for the delivery of the Hub’s Skills for Growth – SME Support programme shares her top tips on how skills and training help retain top talent.

Empowering Employees

Giving your staff room to grow

Developing confidence

If you are a business owner or manager looking to develop new skills and knowledge within your team, or in your own role, click here to apply for the fully funded Skills for Growth – SME support service.

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