The inside path to staff

It's been a busy three years since food and drink sector skills council Improve was born, but the organisation has reached a milestone.

Much of its planning and preparation to address the skills shortages in UK processing is coming to fruition. Now it's ready to boost recruitment, training and retention so the UK can compete internationally.

The appropriately titled 'Taking on The World' conference, held in York towards the end of September, consolidated many of the achievements so far and focused minds on the future. There was promise in the air, but also a recognition that a lot of hard graft lay ahead. As Improve chairman Paul Wilkinson said in his opening address: "We are at the start of a truly explosive phase of skills delivery."

Jack Matthews, Improve chief executive, coolly outlined the challenge ahead. The food industry needed 38,000 extra managers and professionals, 13,000 technicians, 16,000 skilled craft workers and 40,000 trained machine operators in seven years.

Cadbury Schweppes chairman Sir John Sunderland was quick to speak about Improve's work to plug the gap by attracting school leavers to the industry. He referred to the Schools Challenge programme, which encourages manufacturers to hold regional competitions involving teams of schoolchildren working on specially designed projects, such as developing a new product. And he praised the creation of the Diploma in Manufacturing and Product Design for 14-19 year-olds.

But one of the strongest messages to emerge from the day was the increasing need for nationally recognised, relevant in-house training. Without it nothing would deliver the quantity or quality of personnel needed, said Matthews. Concerning the 13,000 technicians, for example, he said: "Some will come from Poland or Slovakia, some will be school leavers. But to reach the numbers we need, some must come from our existing workforce, 80% of whom will be in employment in 10 years."

Sunderland made clear his backing for in-house training at the conference. "Over the past six years we've made a significant investment in the coaching skills of managers across the organisation, training over 850 managers in the UK."

Apprenticeships were a key tool in that process, he said. "Our technician and confectionery apprenticeships develop highly skilled technicians and operators who not only have expertise in the latest technology but are also open and receptive to change and new ways of working.

"These skills are difficult to recruit externally so building the skills internally not only guarantees a great knowledge of, and commitment to, our business but also contributes to filling a nationwide skills gap."

Matthews balanced the need for 118,000 more food and drink industry workers by 2014 against the fact that just 277 food and drink processing apprenticeships were completed in the sector between June 2006 and June 2007 out of a total of 6,500. "We represent the largest UK manufacturing sector, yet we have the lowest take-up of apprenticeships of any manufacturing sector."

He urged the government to increase apprenticeship funding for those aged 25 and above, so-called adult apprenticeships. "Gaining an excellent technical worker, for example, is about ensuring they can go through an adult apprenticeship. That's all very well for larger companies, but small- to medium-sized businesses will find this harder."

Consequently, Improve is working to ease this restriction in England, Scotland and Wales. "We are actively lobbying in the devolved nations for governments to switch funding into adult apprenticeships," said Matthews. Improve has helped mobilise a stakeholder group in Scotland which has written to the Scottish Cabinet minister and the Scottish Skills minister about the issue. Processors Nairns Oatcakes, The Edrington Group and R Mathieson & Sons are involved in the initiative.

Matthews said nationally recognised qualifications needed to be available for on-the-job modular learning as they are for external training. To encourage flexibility, a combination of external and internal learning must be made possible, he added.

Improve's work with training providers to devise flexible apprenticeships has been key to attaining this aim. A full range of courses is being put together offering Level 2 and 3 entry across the board and 12 months had been lopped off the duration of apprenticeships, said Matthews. "Everything is there to move into a credit-based, accumulative process and we've got the agreement of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in England to support the learning. But we must convince the government to align these changes with the legislative process."

However, government support to free up more adult apprenticeships wasn't the only thing needed, said Matthews. The food industry itself needed to be more proactive in providing input into the content of relevant apprenticeship training and should be open to change to accommodate it. With this in mind, Improve has begun to rally the individual parts of the industry to campaign for this goal.

The latest rallying point was the One Voice conference in London on October 30 for the bakery industry, jointly hosted by Improve and William Reed Publishing, publisher of Food Manufacture​ and The Grocer​. More events will follow for other sectors over the winter.

Meanwhile, Improve aims to upskill more female employees in the industry through the Women & Work campaign. In return for a £50 contribution, Improve offers £500 worth of funding enabling women to complete a Level 3 Introductory Certificate in Management from the Chartered Institute of Management.

Improve's launch of a National Skills Academy, including online support and networking, was also helping to equip the workforce of the future, said Matthews.

Clearly more is needed and Sunderland threw down the gauntlet at the conference. "We can either fight it out between us in an increasingly costly battle over an increasingly scarce resource of the right talent and skills. Or, collectively and individually, we can grow that resource - either by raising the game of the people we have now or investing in the next generation." FM

how to generate a sustainable workforce

At 'Taking on the World', British Bakels md Paul Morrow said the food industry's growing complexity called for more skills.

For example, investing in automated lines for the baked goods firm meant training production staff now took four weeks instead of the previous five days.

In-house training that was "100% relevant to the needs of our business" and fitted work schedules was vital, said Morrow. Appropriate external training and funding was hard to find, he said.

"British Bakels also follows the general pattern of being disillusioned or ill served by third-party accredited training," he added. "At one time we put all our sales and service customer teams through relevant NVQ Level 3 and our warehouse staff through Level 2. However, we found much of the prescribed content irrelevant and didn't continue the programme into other departments."

By contrast, internal learning was paying off, he said. Aside from regular supervisor, manager, technical and process operator training, in two years it had employed and trained three food science graduates. It operated a sponsored bursary for an MSc student in applied human nutrition at Oxford Brooks University. It had trained a production worker to offer IT applications support. And it had supported a former member of its customer service staff through the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Level 4 diploma. "He is now our company buyer," said Morrow.

However, he said employers needed backing to raise skills. And availability of bite-sized learning modules and equal access to training throughout the UK were imperative.

British Bakels' investment in training had reduced its management overhead, he said. And skills training had enabled the company to move responsibility for routine quality control tests from laboratories to production supervisors. "The result is improved quality with fewer reject batches arising from more ownership of the products by our production staff who in turn have an expanded and more interesting role." Consequently, he said, the firm had been able to reduce the number of its quality control staff.