Maximising staff productivity Time management. Communication Legal understanding. IT skills of managers Ensuring projects run safely
Identifying IT needs of the company Developing a
business plan Estimating costs accurately
Managing sub-contractors Financial understanding
Ensuring projects run to cost Keeping up on H&S legislation
Corporate Social Responsibility
Managing sustainable practices Identifying
training needs
Delegation; identifying new markets / clients; new business skills
Keeping up on legislation
Vision; Risk management
HIGH INCIDENCE HIGH IMPORTANCE LOW INCIDENCE
HIGH IMPORTANCE
HIGH INCIDENCE LOWER IMPORTANCE
LOW INCIDENCE LOWER
IMPORTANCE
5.15 The skills of most importance (among those experiencing gaps in each) are: • Ensuring projects run safely (a mean of 8.6 out of a possible 10)
• Ensuring projects run to cost and managing project finances (a mean of 8.4) • Maximising staff productivity (8.3)
• Keeping up to date with health and safety legislation (8.2) • Time management and prioritising (8.1)
• Communication (8.1)
• Identifying potential new markets and clients (8.0) and winning new business and general selling skills (8.0)
• Estimating costs accurately (8.0)
Broadly speaking these all relate to the ability to bring in new business, and then to deliver it safely and to cost.
5.16 It is worth noting that all 27 of the skills explored in the survey were felt to be important by those experiencing gaps for each, with mean scores for importance of at least 6.3 out of a possible 10. Relatively speaking the least important issues related to IT skills, both the actual IT skills of managers (a mean of 6.3) and being able to recognise the IT skills of the organisation (6.5).
5.17 Looking at how importance ties in with how many managers are affected by each skills gap, as presented in the previous chart, suggests that particularly critical to tackle, and areas where one would expect high demand or interest from employers, are those considered of higher than average priority and with higher than average density of managerial skill gaps. This applies to:
• Maximising staff productivity
• Time management and prioritising tasks • Written and oral communication skills.
5.18 Following these skill areas, there are those which are of similar importance but which affect fewer managers and supervisors (such as ensuring projects run safely and to cost, keeping up to date with health and safety legislation, delegation, and identifying potential new markets or clients and then related selling / marketing skills), and those of lower importance but affecting quite a high proportion of the management team (these include team building and ensuring getting staff to share the same goals, managing the delivery of sustainable practices, and understanding the implications to the business over the coming years of the low carbon agenda and the increased importance of green issues).
5.19 Annex 2 provides additional details about the sort of skills lacking in each specific skill area. In some areas employers emphasised that it was not so much skills lacking as not having the time to devote to some of these tasks, and this often related to issues such as delegation and time management among senior staff being key to free them up for more strategic aspects of running the business.
5.20 The following table shows skill priorities by federation: for each federation the three main priority skill areas are listed, based on the percentage of all employers interviewed in that federation rating that skills area as 8 or more out of 10 for importance. Federations are presented in alphabetical order, and we show those federations where we conducted at least 20 interviews.
Three main priority skill areas by federation
(% of employers rating each as an 8-10 / 10 for importance)
AIS New business / selling (31%); Keeping up with environmental legislation (28%);
Keeping up with health and safety legislations (27%)
BWF Maximising the productivity of staff (36%); New business / selling (29%); Keeping up
with Health & Safety legislation (29%)
CECA New business / selling (31%); Communication (30%); Time Management (27%)
CPA Maximising the productivity of staff (22%); Keeping up with Health & Safety legislation
Three main priority skill areas by federation (continued)
FMB Keeping up with environmental legislation (29%); Keeping up with Health & Safety
legislation (26%); Identifying potential new markets / clients (28%)
FPDC Time Management (37%); Ensuring projects run to cost (31%); Maximising staff
productivity (29%)
HAE New business / selling (33%); Identifying new markets / clients (25%); Keeping up
with Health & Safety legislation (22%)
NAS Legal understanding of contracts (30%); Managing client expectations / maintaining
high satisfaction (30%); New business / selling (28%);
NFB Maximising the productivity of staff (31%); Winning new business and general selling
skills (30%); Keeping up with environmental legislation (29%)
NFDC Managing client expectations / maintaining high satisfaction (31%); Developing and
creating a clear strategy and vision (27%); Identifying potential new client / markets (27%)
PDA Identifying potential new client / markets (29%); New business / selling (25%);
Keeping up with health and safety legislations (23%)
RSMA Team building (41%); creating a vision and strategy (33%); ensuring projects run to
cost (33%); communication (33%); maximising staff productivity (33%)
SBF Keeping up with Health & Safety legislation (35%); Keeping up with environmental
legislation (29%); Risk management (27%)
SDF New business / selling (33%); Identifying potential new client / markets (31%);
Keeping up with Health & Safety legislation (24%); legal understanding of contracts 924%);
SPOA Time Management (30%); Ensuring project work carried out safely (25%); Delegation
(23%); Communication (23%);
Stone federation
Identifying potential new client / markets; Estimating the cost of projects accurately; Maximising staff productivity; Keeping up with H&S legislation; Time management (each 24%)
6 The training implications of introducing new products or
processes and of emerging ‘green’ job roles
6.1 In this chapter we explore the extent to which the introduction of new products or services (mentioned as being ‘for example renewable technologies such as solar heating’) or new processes (‘such as lean working or new organisational approaches’) had led to any training implications, and if so whether this training was hard to source. In a similar way we look at whether firms employed staff in six specific ‘green’ job roles, and if so where these staff had been recruited from, and whether they have specific training requirements for these occupations which they are finding hard to source. These questions were new to the current study.