ONE OF the biggest and potentially toughest tasks facing TECs is to develop effective ways
of encouraging small firms to become more involved in training.
More than 90 per cent of the six million small businesses in Britain employ fewer than 20 people, and many are so preoccupied with survival in a highly competitive market-place that training remains on the back burner.There is still the temptation to poach skilled workers from other firms rather than become involved in the cost of training existing staff or unskilled recruits.
The TECs, stung by criticism that they concentrate disproportionately on the bigger companies, claim that they are facing up to the undoubted difficulties in getting small firms committed to training. They say that programmes are in place to help tiny companies, including the Investors in People scheme and customised services being developed to meet specific smaller business needs.
TECs are also progressively adopting initiatives aimed at firms operating in the same industrial or service sector, and target training at companies supplying big manufacturers.
In this way, it is hoped, training, qualifications and quality standards in place at the top can cascade to smaller firms in the supply chain.
This is the approach of Birmingham TEC, notably in the automotive sector. David Cragg, its chief executive, is convinced that large companies with dedicated training policies, such as Rover, can play a vital and benevolent role in supporting smaller supplier firms which otherwise would find it difficult to set up their own programmes.
The TEC has started an intensive programme of introducing NVQs into the workplace in various sectors, together with plans to train up to 1,000 assessors.
Cragg reckons 75 per cent of employees in the city taking NVQs are from small businesses.
Frederick Woolley, a Birmingham press-working firm employing almost 200 people, is a second-tier supplier to the automotive industry, and has embraced training and NVQs for its workforce up to level 4. It is now a training provider to the TEC, which sends it employees from smaller companies for their training. The TEC National Council says an independent evaluation shows that TEC services to small firms enhance their effectiveness,performance and profitability. The evaluation suggests that small businesses want more hands-on service, customised to individual requirements.
The Federation of Small Businesses, with 70,000 members, finds small enterprises worried about the cost of training and assessment.
It has claimed that they are under-represented on TEC boards - denied, naturally, by the TEC National Council, which says 345 of the 725 private sector TEC directors come from firms with fewer than 200 employees, and 107 from those with less than 20.
