How can we better support workers who lack confidence in their skills?
It’s always good to be reminded of the reasons we do what we do, and the NIACE round table on 29 November did just that for me. Over the last couple of decades trade unions have demonstrated over and over again that peer to peer interventions are the most effective way of helping workers with little or no formally recognised skills and qualifications, overcome their learning barriers and turn around their lives. Union learning representatives (ULRs) have been hugely influential in convincing colleagues to learn, employers to support them and learning providers to be more flexible in their arrangements for delivering learning.
The 2012 NIACE Adult Participation in Learning Survey showed that in every category of employed learners, the main reasons for learning are career related, and 26% of all learners interviewed (i.e. including the unemployed and others not in employment) took up learning for help in their current job. This reinforced unionlearn’s findings in a recent survey, where 85% of ULRs who responded said that there was at least some demand amongst their colleagues for learning to help them with their current job.
The message from these two sources is quite clear – there is an army of workers who lack confidence that they have adequate skills for the job they are already doing. Even if their lack of confidence is misplaced, there must be a detrimental impact on their morale, and therefore their productivity so, surely, providing the requisite training opportunities for their employees must by a high priority for employers.
Well, surprise, surprise, according to the latest UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey, 26% of businesses across the UK do not perceive a need to train their staff, and a further 15% recognise the need, but have come up against barriers to providing it. ULRs could well be instrumental in demonstrating that real needs do exist, and helping employers to overcome the barriers. However, a pre-requisite for having a ULR at the workplace is to recognise a trade union, and, as desirable as it might be, that is a long way from being the case in most SMEs, and quite a few larger employers.
A great deal of the discussion at the round table centred around making a system of workplace learning advocates (WLAs) and Community Learning Champions work, in the absence of the readymade supportive infrastructure provided to ULRs by their unions and unionlearn. It was encouraging to hear about the work being piloted in a few random areas of the country by the organisation Work Base Learning, but difficult to see how this can be effective without a great deal of awareness raising. This was the other main theme of our table’s action plan, and I for one can’t wait to see a WLA on Eastenders, or the learning equivalent of the Olympic ‘games makers’ being featured on television talk shows.
Ann Joss left school at 16 and worked in several offices before joining the Women’s Royal Navy. She gained her first degree, in Law, after eighteen years as a full time mother, and then went to work in the finance sector. She immediately became active in the banking, insurance and finance union, which supported her to gain a distance learning MA in industrial relations and then a full-time PhD in sociology. She has worked for TUC unionlearn since 2006, where she is responsible for commissioning research into union learning and supporting joint initiatives between unions and Sector Skills Councils.
