Phil Jones, chief executive of the National Skills Academy Process Industries, has explained the urgency for individuals and companies to keep skills up-to-date to survive the recession.

News of the Dow and Croda closures at Wilton, on Teesside, was a devastating blow to the north-east’s process industry. We also have a looming threat of closure to the Sanofi-Aventis pharmaceutical research-and-development plant in Alnwick, which is the only site of its kind in the north east of England and threatens 170 jobs.

The current crisis puts a bright spotlight on the need for individuals and companies to get the skills package in place they need to ride out the storm, or indeed to be re-employable and able to move on if the worst happens.

An ICM poll in May 2009 surveyed more than 500 employers in industries across all sectors who agreed that, in order to survive, skills and training are the number one priority for their companies. The poll revealed that 73 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that has been made by several government ministers (including Lord Mandelson, secretary of state at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) that ’businesses that invest in training are less likely to fail’.

In short, most respondents saw the value of training in guarding against business failure and most had actually undertaken training in the preceding six months. In more than half of cases, the main purpose of the training was part of a long-term strategy to up-skill or re-skill employees (57 per cent and seven per cent respectively) rather than a short-term response to skill shortages in the workforce (12 per cent). In a quarter of businesses, the training had more than one purpose. In the poll, 63 per cent of businesses said that they would maintain the same levels of training.

Perhaps most interestingly, 16 per cent of businesses reported they would increase levels of training. When asked why, the three most frequently cited responses were: more specialised/trained staff are required (34 per cent); the need to survive in a competitive marketplace (19 per cent); and the need to retain existing skilled staff (11 per cent).
Not surprisingly, 52 per cent of the businesses that felt the government should be doing more to help during the recession and wanted this help to come in the form of increased funding.

Being able to offer the relevant and immediate funding through initiatives such as Train to Gain is the government’s challenge in this immediate crisis. This is an issue the National Skills Academy Process Industries is working hard behind the scenes with our Sector Skills Council, Cogent, in which to put the pressure on. If a worker is faced with redundancy or there is a risk to the organisation, having the highest possible level of skills they can is their best suit of armour.

Whether already in a job or wishing to join the process industries, employees have to be as skilled as they can be in today’s climate. This includes having the skills for new processes such as biosciences, biofuels, speciality and polymers as the future of the process industries will rely heavily on a transformational change in processing to a greener way of production. Despite some reaction that the industry cares more about attracting new talent than losing old, employers across the board are telling us they value more than ever the skills of their older employees and accrediting these is vital for them and the company.

That is why we have developed Myskillbank in partnership with Academy members, to ensure all workers have a portable record of their training and accreditation and are highly re-employable. Young people, however, are still the future of the process industries beyond the short term.

 With an average age of 55 in the sector we must ensure young people are gaining the STEM qualifications we need to plan for the future of our industry, and we must show them what that future looks like. We need to promote the new technologies coming through, and the career prospects they can offer.

Without a stream of young people training in our colleges and universities to join the industry, we will not have the skilled people when we pull out of this recession. So join the Academy as a member now - it is free for individuals and will help you shape your skills for today and the future.

Even if you are facing the coal-face of tough times, your workforce and your company needs its suit of armour - it needs the best skills you can give it to survive.

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Processingtalk.com