Skills shortages in the UK doubled to more than half a million between 2017 and 2022, now accounting for around 36% of job vacancies.
Colleges play an important role in reducing shortages and ensuring that businesses have the skilled workforces they need for the future – but skills needs are changing rapidly.
Industries with urgent skills shortages like engineering and construction are evolving quickly as technology and automation capabilities progress. In-demand jobs like drone operators, sustainability managers and robotics engineers didn’t exist even five years ago.
Partnerships between colleges and employers are crucial for keeping up with fast-moving industries and skills needs. The launch of Skills England highlights the impact that these partnerships can have in solving local and regional skills shortages, and driving economic growth on a national scale.
Here are some of the benefits of these partnerships and how technology like Bud can help colleges overcome common challenges.
There’s no doubt that employer partnerships have a positive effect on students’ learning. Specialist speakers, workplace visits, job shadowing and placement opportunities all rely on colleges having strong partnerships with local employers.
By giving students access to professional industry knowledge and practical, hands-on experience, colleges can empower them to make more informed decisions related to their future education and training.
Rachel Topliss, Director of Student Employability Services at The Sheffield College, discussed the impact in a podcast episode on developing effective employer relationships:
“Employers are helping us to raise awareness of different industries. If you think of something like engineering, a student might think that engineering is just working in a workshop. They’re not thinking about product design, sales, customer service, HR, business and all the things that go in there,” she said.
These partnerships also benefit employers and colleges themselves. Employers can widen their talent pool by showcasing career opportunities to students and encouraging them to stay in the local area, which can reduce regional skills shortages. There’s also an opportunity to upskill current employees by creating student mentoring schemes.
For colleges, employer partnerships not only help to shape apprenticeship training and other qualifications around business needs, but they can also serve as a valuable marketing asset. Rachel explained that Sheffield College has had students travel from outside of their catchment area just because they wanted to be associated with an employer sponsor.
“From a marketing perspective for T Levels, if I post something on social media and get a couple of thousand hits, it’s really positive. Last year, we posted something we’d done with Kier Construction and we had 15,000 hits within two hours. It’s really helped to promote what the college is about and what we want to achieve with T Levels, and also build our reputation in the city,” she said.
While there are plenty of top-level benefits to employer-college collaboration, there are often challenges when it comes down to the administrative side of training. Poor communication and time and resource constraints can make it hard to work together and ensure learners achieve successful outcomes.
Overcoming these barriers requires proactive steps from both parties, but having a centralised training management platform makes the process much easier. Training management platforms like Bud can help colleges build and strengthen partnerships by:
Streamlining learner enrolment: Get new relationships off to the best start with a smooth digital enrolment process and a platform that’s fully intuitive for learners
Providing a dedicated employer portal: Give employers real-time reports on the status of learners and make it easy to contribute to planned learner reviews
Saving time on admin: Say goodbye to multiple spreadsheets and time-consuming data entry. Bud requires data to be input only once and secures it in a central data warehouse, so colleges can spend more time on tasks that will add value
Colleges will also be able to communicate easily with learners and employers using our brand new feature, Bud Messaging. Whether it’s a one-to-one message or a broadcast announcement to multiple people, it can all be done directly within Bud to keep programmes moving forward. This feature is going live shortly, so stay tuned!
Bud’s all-in-one training management system enables colleges, universities and training providers to support learners at every stage of their journey.
Our intuitive platform provides a seamless experience that reduces administrative burden, drives compliance and gives colleges the tools they need to create the skilled workforce of tomorrow.