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News Release from: The Manufacturer Live
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 24 July 2006
Manufacturing skills summit criticises
UK agencies
Manufacturing industry HR bosses have rounded on the UK Government agencies set up to solve the sector's skills problems, condemning them as 'a waste of time' and 'of no use'.
Manufacturing industry HR bosses have rounded on the Government agencies set up to solve the sector's skills problems, condemning them as 'a waste of time' and 'of no use' At a manufacturing skills summit in Oxford (19 July, 2006), 100 manufacturing executives, with responsibilities for hiring, training and hanging on to their staff, heard a panel of senior HR directors from industry giants Unipart, JCB, Nestle and St Gobain turn on quangos like the Learning and Skills Council and the various industry-specific sector skills councils
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 20 Jul 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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In response to an innocuous enquiry from 'People Management' magazine editor and summit facilitator Steve Crabb about the effectiveness of the agencies, the HR bosses variously described them as bureaucratic, over complicated, a waste of time and 'having nothing to offer me'.
"We have tried grant-funded skills and found them singularly unsuccessful; a waste of time," said JCB's group HR director.
It was a sentiment echoed by Alan McLenaghan, site director at St Gobain Glass who said he had told the quangos, "You have nothing to offer me." "By the time you have got to know about them it is a year, then you start to engage with them, then everything changes; they are over complicated and not well publicised," said another delegate.
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Matt Stripe, senior HR Business partner at Nestle in York and John Greatrex, group HR director were no more complimentary, both preferring to tackle their own recruitment, training and retention issues.
Asked to indicate whether or not they had engaged with any of the agencies, fewer than a dozen of the 100 delegates answered 'yes' and each of them said the liaison had not been successful.
Among other issues, the role staff from Eastern Europe were playing in sustaining British manufacturing was much praised, while age discrimination laws due to come into effect in October would 'hit hard' and were viewed as 'quite frightening' because their full ramifications had not been thought through.
Glen White, CEO of The Manufacturing Alliance initiative which hosted the debate at Unipart's Oxford headquarters, said: "Some of the agencies are quite new so I wasn't too surprised at the lack of visibility but I was taken aback a bit by the ferocity of the response".
"We have another wider two-day manufacturing summit due in September so that could provide the Government and the agencies the opportunity to answer back and explain why they seem so poorly regarded.
I'll certainly be inviting them to do so." * About 'The Manufacturer' - The Manufacturer magazine is the core brand of Conquest Business Media, delivering strong and informative editorial to senior manufacturing management in the UK and the US via the magazine itself, its portal www.themanufacturer.com, an annual Manufacturer Live event, The Manufacturing Research Centre's White Paper Reports, and by facilitating and fronting webcasts and The Manufacturing Alliance, a networking, debating and lobbying initiative conducted six times a year at world class manufacturing plants throughout the UK.
Complementing the brand, Conquest also publishes the boardroom magazine Industry, Energy Business (US), Energy Business (UK), Materials Handling Today and IT in Manufacturing.
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