Time to get ahead in business

In terms of training courses, most people are aware of thing like the Microsoft MCSE or the Novell CNE but what generic or business type qualifications are out there?

Over the last 18 months we have started to see qualifications come out from awarding bodies like the City & Guilds or OCR which have elements of vendor certification in them. For example now you can do an OCR course with elements of the Microsoft Certified Engineer program included -- which means that when you get an NVQ it will be more relevant to the market. Although that sounds like a small change it was actually fairly revolutionary for the bodies concerned.

The other key thing that is going to happen is that a couple of weeks ago there was an announcement about Sector Skills Agreements. It's a process rather than a product at the moment but the idea is that the government spends billions of pounds that isn't necessarily targeted at the strategically important sectors; government now wants to direct the budget they have for training to meet the strategic needs of UK plc through the sector skills councils like us. We don't know how it's going to pan out yet but the sector agreements are going to be the mechanism by which the funding becomes more focused. This should all mean that, much more quickly, the supply side -- the colleges etc -- will become more market focused to the market's needs.

It's always a thorny issue isn't it -- the degree to which companies or industry should be involved in higher or further education?

Yes -- it's that difficult balance over whether to educate or whether to train. People in education have been doing it for years and years and know more about education than the industry.The problem you get to is the universities that are willing to respond to the market are often the more modern universities and polytechnics because they are more vocationally focused but the places that the big employers want to recruit from are the more established a prodigious institutions that are less likely to accept industry input because they've been around for hundreds of years. It's a dilemma we are in the middle of at the moment. The key thing is though, that at least it's a debate that is actually happening now. There is a lot of opportunity for businesses to get involved and influence the government agenda and we are looking for people to help us do that.

What about other financial help or tax breaks for training?

To be honest that is pre-judging what will come out of the sector agreements to an extent. But what we hope is that if we get sector agreements right and get the further and higher education colleges ready and able to deliver the things that industry needs then rather than having to go to more expensive courses then companies or individuals can go take advantage of publicly funded or subsidised training. So in that way government money will be going to employers if you like. I don't really see cash changing hands but we'll just have to see how it works out.

A lot of fuss has been made about the whole 'off-shoring' issue but what kind of impact do you think outsourcing has really had on the skills market here?

Generally it seems to be development type roles that are being outsourced but there are some signs that some of the higher value tasks may be outsourced. There was a big wave towards outsourcing ten years ago then everyone came back in-house again. Now it seems people are outsourcing selective elements of their IT operation rather than the whole thing. One company I came across outsourced everything but quickly realised that meant they couldn't set strategy anymore because they'd outsourced it to someone who didn't understand the business.