A Levels and Employability

Today sees about 335,000 students in England, wales and Northern Ireland collect their A Level results.  Once again, the pass rate has climbed for a 30th successive year but, unusually, the proportion of candidates getting the highest A and A* grades has fallen.

The CIPD's "People Management" online magazine reports on these figures but also raises questions on the ongoing applicability of A Levels providing the basic requirements for employability.


'Schools are failing to provide sufficient employability skills or enough work experience opportunities, according to research from the Adecco Group, released today.  “The reality is that while academic excellence is a vital part of the UK education system, that alone is not enough,” said Peter Searle, chief executive of the Adecco Group.  “One of the best ways to help young people get on the career ladder is to make it compulsory to have a minimum level of exposure to employment skills advice delivered directly by employers.”  Separate figures have revealed that just one in ten employees believe that A-levels provide a valuable foundation for working life.'

The CIPD News Report can be read here.

Whilst the new A Level figures make a timely reminder to hang these comments to, falling basic employee skills is not a new issue and one that BPM has been active in raising the profile upon over recent years.  For this reason, BPM has also taken an active role in helping to develop Brass Tacks, a new approach to management development aimed at developing employees so that they maximise their contirbution to their employer.

Interested?  Find out more though the following link:

Brass Tacks - A New Approach to Management Development.

Leadership Development - How Can Companies Develop Their Talent?

This week, the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) have published a report on the Leadership and Talent Pipeline which, for any business leader, should make for interesting (and perhaps concerning) reading.

One of the report headlines suggests that "93% of respondents expressed concern that low levels of management skills are having a direct impact on their business achieving its goals".

The report which is based upon research findings from 750 UK based organisations looks at how the skills required to operate at middle and senior levels in companies should "filter up through a business via training and investment from first line management onwards" which should then "give employers confidence in the talent coming through the ranks and enable them to make the majority of managerial appointments internally".

Given this, it is quite staggering that "only 18% of employers expect candidates to have received management training prior to being appointed to a management position. This means the vast majority of first line managers are expected to learn on the job with no support, creating a ‘sink or swim’ scenario".

The report also looks at the shift of skills that takes place from junior to senior positions with strategic and financial acumen becoming increasingly important as functional technical skills diminish.  However, "with no focus on recruiting or developing these skills at more junior levels, employees are finding themselves insufficiently equipped to take on senior management roles".  

The report highlights that many employers are turning to external recruitment to overcome this with. "Almost half (47%) of employers cite the lack of internal staff capability as the single biggest barrier to ensuring an effective pipeline of leaders and managers. Without the necessary skills and capabilities being developed internally, the cycle of external recruitment, with its additional costs and risks, can impact on the ability of UK businesses to build their future operations".

So what should employers be doing?  Well the simple answer is that they should be looking to develop the talent within their organisations  and this is where Brass Tacks comes in.

Brass Tacks is a unique approach to Management Training, providing basic training across a broad range of management, supervisory and general business skills.  Brass Tacks uses a blended learning approach, combining highly interactive training workshops, candidate self study & reflective learning and assessment and resulting in an ILM Endorsed Award.  Brass Tacks has partnered with the Marshall Gurney Institute to provide the candidates with an extensive source of web based training and support materials to assist their learning.  

Brass Tacks courses are aimed at new managers and/or supervisors or to personnel aspiring to these positions, working in anything from SME’s to Corporate Organisations and everything in between.  The training demystifies the complexities of business and management and provides candidates with the necessary skills to develop into their job roles.

The major benefits associated with Brass Tacks events are:

• Brass Tacks offer a wide range of skills development programmes that can be tuned to the particular needs of the candidate and/or their organisation. This can be used to ensure that the right blend of learning is achieved to ensure that employees are ready for advancement within their company or business.

• Brass Tacks is focused upon learning rather than training to ensure that the skills are embedded and utilised leading to ongoing and sustainable business improvement rather than simply sitting in a training manual on the shelf. This is achieved through ongoing post learning support and development following attendance at a Brass Tacks event.

The Brass Tacks Trainers are all highly experienced business leaders and managers within their fields.  They offer an engaging and “no nonsense” approach to the training, making business and management “simple to understand, easy to implement”.

<Read the full ILM Report here.>



Further information on Brass Tacks events can be obtained from:

steve@beaufortperformancemanagement.co.uk

CIPD/CMI Seminar: Change Management in Practice

CIPD/CMI NW Organisational Development Forum

Tuesday 19th June 2012; 12:30 to 17:00

Change Management in Practice  

Beaufort Performance Management Limited will be jointly-leading a half day CIPD/CMI Seminar looking at Change Management.  The Seminar will feature two widely differing case studies.

One case study, presented by Steve Farnworth, Managing Director, Beaufort Performance Management Ltd. tells the story of how the significant internal reorganisation of a warehousing and product despatch department resulted in annualised savings of £1.2M. The study will show how potentially affected personnel were engaged to ensure that they took a proactive approach to the review.

The second case study will tell the story of the creation of a new voluntary and community sector infrastructure provider through the merger of two organisations. A deliberately values based and purposeful process was used to explore the options with trustees, staff and stakeholders prior to the decision to merge and following the announcement of that decision.  The Case Study will be presented by Jackie Le Fevre, Director of Magma Effect and Sally Yeoman, Chief Executive, Halton and St. Helens Voluntary and Community Action. 

The Seminar will take place at:

Room Four Conference Venue

58 Legh Street 

Golborne
Warrington

Cheshire

WA3 3PA

Bookings for the event can be made on the CIPD Website.

Poor Employee Engagement....or Poor Leadership ?

The ILM posted a good, thought provoking article in the Edge Online Magazine this week looking at the subject of maintaining employee engagement during the difficult business conditions that most employers are currently facing.


The article touches on the issue of how the term "employee engagement" can be misused within organisations, often looking to blame the employees for various ills within the business rather than actively looking to address these ills!  Low employee engagement is, more often than not, a sign of poor leadership rather than some inherent negative quality that the employees possess.




In many ways, low levels of employee engagement can be seen as a massive opportunity to do better  rather than an excuse for doing badly.  But how can we ensure that we continue to motivate our employees during these difficult business times ?  The answer is actually more straight forward than many people think.  The difficult market and business conditions actually create a perfect opportunity for us to stretch and challenge our employees (in a positive way) to find innovate and cost effective solutions to allow the organisation to continue to flourish.


It may not always be easy but give your employees the headroom and you'll be surprised how often then come up with good, workable and effective ideas....after all, we've selected good people and trained them well to do their jobs.....if we continue to communicate with them and set them challenging goals within the allowable constraints of the current business climate then we have every reason to believe that they will rise to the challenge and deliver results......and maintain high levels of motivation as a result !


<Read the ILM article here.>

The Demographics Time Bomb - Problem or Opportunity ?

I read an extremely interesting report today from Booz & Co concerning the demographics time bomb that is facing business and society looking at some of the metrics that can be used to measure where an organisation (or country) fits.  One of the metrics that they present is that of dependency (the "non working" proportion of the population that is dependent upon the "working" population).  Obviously, there is a difference between young dependents who will soon grow up an join the working population and older dependents that will continue to rely on the working population through until they pass away.  The report also identifies the strong link between dependency and the degree of "development" of the region.


From a UK and European perspective, the data presented makes a lot of sense and highlights the urgent and ongoing need to change our approach to the aging population and ensure that we continue get the best possible contribution from the older members of our society.


To quote from the report:


".....countries must redefine the notion of aging. Some governments have begun by attempting to raise the retirement age, but that measure is just a starting point. The real challenge is cultural. Countries need to raise a new generation that considers work to be a lifelong endeavor, with periods of varying intensity, rather than an activity that they perform for a preset number of years and then stop altogether at retirement. Developing this concept of work will involve the public and private sectors as well as civil society and academia. It must be introduced as early as preadolescence — embedded in the education system, and reinforced by flexible career paths that allow employees to gradually ramp down in their 60s and 70s instead of retiring."


I feel that there are two key areas that are missing from the report:


Skills Development:  As regions move into periods of "high old age dependency" then the industry in that region must be one of high revenues from relative few employees, i.e. using advanced technology and industrial concepts.  Such industry is likely to have a significantly more demanding skill set than less developed industrial regions, not only for employees entering the workforce out of "youth dependency" but also for workers who are already employed and need to "up skill" to maintain their value and contribution in the workplace.  Associated with this is a cultural change away from "a job for life" and towards "lifelong learning".


Strategic Thinking:  The report talks extensively about planning for the future and describing time scales of between 20 and 40 years.  However, countries and companies are not used to planning on these sorts of timescales.  For a politician, a long term view is thinking about what is required to get him re-elected into the next parliament...typically no more than 5 years away.  For business and industry, the relatively short term needs of the shareholder often take priority over long term reinvestment strategy and in this case, a 5 year view is often seen as sufficient.  Also impact upon this in a significant way is the position within whatever economic cycle is in place for the country or company and it's ability to pay today for the future plans...the current situation in Greece being an excellent example.


All countries (and organisations operating in therein) need to recognise where they are upon the "dependency curve" and take appropriate action to ensure that they are strategically prepared for their future (on a 5 to 25 year time frame) and this process will take time and energy.....and in my view MUST be completed with the buy in of the people affected by the changes that are being proposed !


Read the article here.  (Note that you may need to register a free account in order to see the report).

Are Business Leaders Trustworthy ?

This week, the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) issued their annual report on the levels of trustworthiness of organisations in the UK.  The research, which has been carried out each year for the last 3 years, shows that levels of trust in organisations has generally risen over the three year period which, given the delicate state of the economy and the obvious current lack of trust in Politicians, Bankers and News of the World Journalists, it shows that businesses are actually moving in the right direction !


One extremely interesting observation is the finding that CEO's in large public sector organisations and found to be less trustworthy than their counterparts in Private or Third Sector organisations and this probably reflects the ongoing unease over public organisational change sector cost reduction activities.


The report can be downloaded from the ILM Website.

Organisational Change leads to Employee Stress.

I came across an excellent report this week published by CIPD looking at trends in sickness absence.  The report contains some extremely interesting findings.  CIPD report that "for the first time....stress is the most common cause of long-term sickness absence for both manual and non-manual employees.  Public sector respondents identify organisational change and restructuring as the number one cause of stress at work, highlighting the impact of public sector cuts to jobs, pension benefits and pay freezes.   Job insecurity is also reported as a more common cause of work-related stress in the public sector this year."


While this may not come as any great surprise, it is interesting to see evidence of elevated stress levels caused directly from organisational change activity and, if evidence were needed, points out the importance of effective and competent management of change within organisation.


The full report can be downloaded from the CIPD Website.