The urgent cry of the Leitch report to up-skill the UK’s workforce to save us from a “lingering decline in competitiveness, diminishing economic growth and a bleaker future for all”, as well as this year’s CBI audit of business education and skills, which showed that 40% of employers worry about their employees' basic skills, has led, quite rightly, to concern about the state of the nation’s workforce.
In turn, this has led to a number of large-scale initiatives hoping to up-skill the current and potential workforce, from the new heavily debated Diplomas to the less controversial Apprenticeships.
But, could we be over-complicating the issue? While not wishing to blow the Young Enterprise trumpet too loudly, the “Learning By Doing” formula, which has been at the heart of our efforts to engage young people with business for over 45 years, is still as strong as ever, according new research from FreshMinds.
The independent research was carried out to tell us exactly what the impact of the Young Enterprise Company Programme really is. We were pleased to find that enterprise education was rated by our Company Programme alumni as the most significant school experience that enabled them to develop key business and life skills, above school work, friends and family, work experience, or extracurricular activities. In fact, Young Enterprise alumni said that the Company Programme prepared them better in all of the following skills, over and above any other school experience: leadership, teamwork, presentation, self motivation, negotiation, decision making and risk taking.
What’s more, because Young Enterprise has actively sought input from business throughout its four decade history, the kinds of skills that are learned through the Company Programme are those that we know businesses are looking for. Our own insights are supported by the CBI’s audit of business education and skills, which revealed that most employers (86%) rank positive attitude and "employability" – including team working, communication, business awareness, self-management and problem-solving skills – as a priority. These are exactly the skills acquired through our Company Programme.
So, I suppose what we can learn from this is that, while it’s certainly right to look for ways to up-skill our workforce (perhaps now more than ever), and while there are many new and innovative things being done to help achieve this, let’s make sure we look at what is already working before we re-invent the wheel.
Rachael Anderton is the deputy CEO of enterprise education charity, Young Enterprise.
