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10 | 26th september - 2nd october 2014 | UtILItY WeeK Interview to mandate training and skills invest- ment among contractors and the supply chain; and disseminating clear labour force information to schools, colleges and universities about job opportunities in the sector. Thanks to some hard work conducted by EU Skills, this information is now readily available, says Robertson. "We can say, in any region, how many jobs will be needed in the next five years." Stabbing at the air, Robertson says: "We can say we'll want 200 of them, 500 of them, and so on." All secondary schools, colleges and universities must now provide information about the employ- ability of their leavers, so this information should be eagerly welcomed and, adds Robertson, for sceptics who have been put off by past difficulties in com- municating with educational institutions, there's an employer-friendly mechanism to help utilities get their message across. "We're using the National Grid-inspired Careers Lab model to get this information into the education system. This is an excellent system for school-business relation- ship building." It all adds up to a picture of progress that utilities should be proud of, says Robertson. But unfortunately there are barriers that prevent the sector from fully capi- talising on these efforts and turning them into part of a proactive growth strategy – rather than simply remedial action. The first problem is the highly politicised nature of energy policy and the poor profile of utilities in the pub- lic eye. "There's a feeling in the sector at the moment that companies should simply keep their heads down in case they get shot at," Robertson observes. "This is under- standable, but wrong. This is exactly the time when we should be shouting about what we are doing, about the value of the training on offer to individuals and about the economic value of the jobs we create." This latter point leads Robertson on to the second barrier: the utility sector's notable absence from the government's industrial strategy, its framework for eco- nomic rebalancing and growth. Since this strategy was published in September 2011, 11 sector strategies have emerged, designed to position those sectors – which are seen as strategic priorities – to maximise their growth potential. Offshore wind and nuclear generation both appear in this elite group, but Robertson argues that energy and utilities should be on the list as a "system-level" entity. "We're out of alignment," he says, "and this is stopping us forming a consistent and coherent growth agenda, including dealing with sector skills problems in the opti- mum way." Why were utilities le out of frame when priority sec- tors were identified? Robertson says it is because of the time at which the government took a snapshot of eco- nomic performance across all sectors. "The government took its snapshot of the energy and utilities sectors at a time when a lot of regulation and policy was being finalised, which was poor timing and led to government characterising energy and utilities as low-growth areas." A second factor that led to government undervaluing the sector's ability to contribute to an economic turna- round was its lack of appreciation of the significance of the sector's skills gaps. "They failed to appreciate that, even if the sector had no growth, with half of our people leaving in the next ten years, the sector still offers a huge employment opportunity." Finally, the government sealed an "insensitive" view of utilities by failing to take into account "the entrepreneur- ial activities that many utilities support outside their regulated business". Robertson says he is referring to renewable energy investments and research in water firms, for instance. EU Skills' chief, himself an ex-government man, is keenly working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to get this vision of utilities reas- sessed. "Our positioning in relation to broader industrial strategy needs tidying," he confirms and, on the back of recent conversations, he is confident this will happen soon. In the meantime, EU Skills will continue to support ways to put the energy and utilities sectors into positions of greater influence by working around strategic policy inadequacies. The EEIP is in itself a pertinent example of this. The partnership came into being when EU Skills won a bid with the government's Employer Ownership of Skills (EOS) programme – a £340 million initiative to put employers in charge of government funding for the design and delivery of vocational qualifications. This success made the EEIP the first and largest of five industrial partnerships to be formed under EOS, a devel- opment that took many by surprise. "No-one expected us [utilities] to get an industrial partnership," recalls Robertson. "We weren't even in the running. And yet the bid was so strong we won." This has enabled EU Skills to create a sector council for strategic skills development and the identification of growth opportunities – similar to the councils in those sectors that were awarded sector strategies in the indus- trial strategy. It's an important step toward gaining the sector the recognition that Robertson is so set on. "Even if the sector had no growth, with half of our people leaving in the next ten years, the sector still offers a huge employment opportunity" EEIP update One of the first actions of the Energy and Efficiency Industrial Partnership (EEIP) council has been to create and gain approval for a unique quality assurance system that lets utility employers take responsibility for assessing their own apprentices. This system will be delivered through an employer-led independent assess- ment service and, Robertson says, will address a "ludicrous situation" in which employers are required by law the carry out assessments on skilled tradespeo- ple in their organisations, but are not allowed to do so for apprentices. "The service will allow employers to draw on existing skills within their organisations and across the sector to reduce the amount of bureaucracy involved in running an apprenticeship programme," Robertson explains. It also lays the foundations for peer review of apprenticeship frameworks – and the way in which they are being delivered – in the energy and utilities sectors. "This could be extremely valuable, not just in terms of developing new and forward-looking content for apprenticeships frameworks," says Robertson, "but also in giving employers peace of mind. At the end of the day, brands are intrinsically tied to safety and competency and the bar is going up all the time." Providing structured insight into the assessment techniques of peers across industry – with confidence that these techniques fully reflect the values of utilities firms rather than training bodies – should therefore be a popular move. Visit www.energyandefficiencypartnership.co.uk to find out more about the Energy Efficiency Industrial Partnership.