Speaking at a Work Foundation conference on skills in London, Hancock said vocational training needed to be seen as a high value investment by employers.
Drawing parallels with Germany, where workplace training is part of the culture, he said the UK needed a “change in attitudes towards training”, where employers didn’t worry about training staff only to have them poached by competing organisations.
“We must break out of a low training culture and make training a better, more reliable investment,” he said. “We have a once in a generation chance to crack it and get vocational education to do what it’s supposed to do: give students real value training and give employers the skills they need.”
He proposed “three Rs” to fix the skills gap and improve the state of training: responsiveness (giving more power to employers to design frameworks that work for them), rigour (in basic skills) and revolution in attitudes.
The future of work
The event launched a report by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) on the future of work.
Among other things, The Future of Work report predicts “skills activism”, where innovation in technology will drive the automation of professional work, promoting an extensive Government-led skills programme to retain those whose jobs are at risk.
It also predicts multi-media virtual work will become the norm and that as businesses seek additional flexibility, they will decrease their core workforce and begin to rely on networks of project-based workers.
UKCES commissioner and Siemens HR director Toby Peyton-Jones presented some of the key findings at the event.
“Will zero-hours style contracts become the norm,” he said. “Even today, I write contracts for hours I know people don’t do. The 9-5 doesn’t exist any more.”
He added that the contract between employer and employee would be very different. “Employers will have to think about a scenario where employees are less bound to an organisation,” he said.
