Skills even more important in recession
Margot James attended the December breakfast meeting of the Dudley Chamber of Commerce held at the Village Hotel, Dudley. The meeting was held in conjunction with Business Skills Stourbridge, a division of Stourbridge College.
Business Skills Stourbridge are providing skills based learning and apprentice support for leading employers, including the Police and Westfield, across the West Midlands. Kim Babb, Director of ‘Business Skills Stourbridge’ presented on the need for business to invest in its workforce and the benefits that flow from such investment.
Research shows that in the previous 12 months 48% of companies in the West Midlands have recruited from overseas to cover specific skills shortages. Margot commented “When I was running my own business and when I was on the board of an NHS Trust we had to recruit from overseas, so this is nothing new, what worries me is that I hear employers say that it is just as much about attitudes as it is about skills – workers from Eastern Europe, according to employers, have a strong work ethos and service orientation”.
Margot added “but most people indigenous to the Black Country have a strong work ethic so we should not be at a disadvantage; sometimes it is training in customer service and communication skills that is needed just as much as training in traditional skills.
The meeting also heard from Paul Coxhead, managing director of AE Hawkins(AEH), a haulage company based in Brierley Hill. AEH have delivered training with the support of Business Skills Stourbridge to the drivers of their twenty lorries. Paul mentioned a number of tangible benefits the company got from the training, in particular significant improvements in Fuel Efficiency and a reduction in maintenance costs. AEH, like all hauliers at the moment, are facing huge cost pressures, many of which are a direct result of government policy, and investing in training has proved very much a ‘must do’ as opposed to a ‘nice to do’ where AEH are concerned.
Margot’s company, Shire Health, was one of the first companies in it’s field to gain the Investors In People endorsement.
Photo: Margot with Kim Babb, Director of Business Skills Stourbridge.
