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22/03/2017
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CIMSPA conference success

Last week’s joint conference with Quest NBS was great success, with over 450 sector professionals attending at Chesford Grange in Warwickshire.

CIMSPA led the conference content on the second day, including a fascinating keynote interview between CIMSPA’s CEO and Andrew Honeyman, head of health, workforce and diversity at DCMS.

Andrew’s message to our sector was clear – we are already seen by government as part of the solution, and now need to follow through with our professionalisation programme: “From where I am sitting, CIMSPA is punching well above its weight for an organisation of its size. What they’ve achieved is outstanding. Join us to help fight inactivity and get behind your chartered institute.”

And, if you were unable to attend, watch out for a full report on each session which will be published on our conference microsite: www.cimspa-conference.org

All members will be notified as soon as this conference report is available.

Some day 2 highlights...

The positive payoff of investing in staff skills and training

Even within the context of an uncertain and complex training and development landscape (with the apprenticeship levy and changes to technical education). our panel celebrated how they invest in staff, with Hilary Farmiloe commenting that “"When sufficiently supported, trained, developed and challenged, staff are committed, motivated, confident and focused on achieving success and delivering great customer service.”

The business case for diversity

A lively panel choice, which highlighting the missed value of having too few women on boards and explained how, if organisations want a more diverse customer base, they need to think differently about employing disabled people. The audience were presented with sobering statistics on BAME representation, with the view being that organisations need to bring in more skills to better reflect the audiences they serve, understand cultural sensitivities and the barriers some groups face in accessing programmes.

Living with the levy

The panel outlined how CIMSPA continues to lead the sector on behalf of employers re: apprenticeships, and will be the custodian of the quality assurance process for training providers and end-point assessments, ensuring that standards are high, cowboys have no place in the market and the training and assessment is fit for purpose to meet the needs of the sector. The challenge for business now is to ensure that, if affected by the levy, allowances are claimed and spent appropriately on training provision, end-point assessments or in-house activity.

The skills agenda

A standout event highlight from a brilliant panel. They examined the challenges of the sector not having its own pathway in the post-16 skills plan brings, how “Raising the Bar” continues to show that employers need to top-up the skills of new employees, and the complexity of the UK’s technical qualification landscape.

CIMSPA labour market intelligence report / introducing CIMSPA eLearning

A double header from two members of the CIMSPA team. Tara Dillon kicked off with an overview of the LMI process results, before Ian Doherty previewed CIMSPA’s soon-to-be launched eLearning service, aimed at overcoming some of the skills shortfalls identified in the research.

Measuring the impact of investing in quality

In the closing keynote, Nick Bradley, CEO of Premier Global outlined his belief that the sector can learn from some of the learning and development strategies that organisations such as Google, Nike and Apple deliver.

Thanks to our sponsors

CIMSPA and Quest NBS would like to thank our event sponsors: