Written By:
Mark Rudge
Commercial Partnerships Director
Acorn by Synergie
I believe teaching the right skills, which are essentially green skills, to help new companies entering Wales employ the workforce they need is key to Wales’ economic future. One area which has a unique opportunity to lead the way with this is Neath Port Talbot.
My colleagues and I at leading recruitment company Acorn by Synergie are currently working with the Welsh Government and the Community Union to help at least 500 people who are losing their jobs at Tata Steel find new employment. Together we are working at an employment support centre in Aberafan Shopping Centre to offer help, advice, training opportunities, and hopefully get them into new jobs.
It is very rewarding work and we have already had some significant success. But as great as it is, and as grateful we all are for the funding coming from government and Tata Steel to help support this scheme and others around the region, I’m not sure it’s enough.
There is a fundamental need in Neath Port Talbot and along the M4 corridor to take a long hard look at the companies that are moving into the area, and the developments that are planned (such as floating offshore wind, Milford Haven Freeport, sustainable aviation fuel facility). We need to train and upskill accordingly, and soon.
I believe that Welsh Government needs to appoint some kind of skills tsar to look at the engineering and manufacturing landscape, and work with academia, employers and trainers on getting the right kind of skills being taught now. We need a decade long plan to map out the jobs and skills that are needed in the short, medium and long term to keep the companies arriving and attract even more.
I’m sure that there is some work going on in the background within our higher and further education colleges in Wales to fill this gap and I’d be intrigued to see what they are doing and who they are talking to, but I believe we need a collaborative approach. As businesses and organisations, we can’t know it all and so we need an overarching view to ensure we in Wales aren’t missing a trick.
We are about to have a Green economic boom in Wales – both in terms of transitional technology and in terms of a permanent solution to decarbonisation of our industries.
For example, earlier this year, the UK Government supported Associated British Port’s floating offshore wind hub at Port Talbot, advancing it to the Primary List of Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme. This endorsement will mean that the region is at the forefront of the UK’s new industrial revolution – the green economy. It will provide thousands of jobs right across the supply chain.
But do we have the skills in Wales to fulfil this potential boom? I don’t believe we currently do and so think we need to find out who can teach these skills. We need to engage with employers to find out what they need, and we need to demonstrate to those losing jobs that gaining these new skills will give them secure employment for years to come.
To build the offshore wind hub alone will take thousands of people with thousands of skills, many of which we already have regionally, but I would wager a hell of lot that we don’t have. Therefore, I think we need to be working on this now to scope it out – to plan for the builders we’ll need to lay the foundations for these new facilities, for the fabricators we’ll need to build the walls, to the engineers to build the machinery and the chemists to work in the labs.
We need to be working together with engineering businesses, with sustainable aviation fuel developers, with manufacturing companies, to ensure that we do have the skills they need to run successful businesses and keep them in Neath Port Talbot.
The potential is massive. The jobs will be here. Whether we have the workforce needed to support it is another thing and one that concerns me.
That’s why I believe that now more than ever, governments, employers, academia – both higher and further education providers – as well as training providers, and other stakeholders, such as us at Acorn by Synergie, need to come together to work out what a green future Welsh workforce will look like and the skills they will need. I believe the future of the Welsh economy depends on it.
