Richard Kirk, Founder and CEO of Workplus, impresses on the importance of harnessing talent at the early stages
Skills shortages. It’s a phrase I hear frequently in conversations with employers and business leaders but what does it actually mean?
The recent Northern Ireland Skills Survey (released in Dec 2023) made for a sobering read. Over a fifth of employers had at least one vacancy which is impacting 96% of employers, most commonly increasing workload for other staff. Employers are struggling to find the right people which in turn is impacting current staff and growth potential.
Those statistics were in my mind when I read that student loan costs are set to balloon to £10bn a year. In the article, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the UK Government could expect to make a loss on all (yes, all!) student loans, regardless of whether they were repaid in full or not. And let’s not forget, for the lives behind those statistics, we have thousands of graduates shouldering student debt they’ll never be able to repay.
In short, the current system is costing us all.
So, what’s the solution? I would suggest a seismic shift in how we think about - and crucially, how we tangibly connect - work and education.
I’ve long been an advocate of apprenticeships and the benefits they bring to all involved. I’m involved in this space because I see the value it brings to the economy and society.
For employers it’s not just about finding talent, it’s part of better retention, moulding early talent to suit the needs of the company and encouraging a culture of mentoring and lifelong learning. Furthermore, it feeds into better diversity as it allows employers to draw people from a wider talent pool. For apprentices, it’s about a job from the start, continued education, dedicated mentoring and no student fees.
So why aren’t more employers embracing apprenticeships? I think there are two fundamental – and related - reasons. Firstly, many don’t know where to start and, secondly, the early talent landscape feels complex and siloed. For a lot of busy business leaders and HR professionals, they have neither the headspace nor the time to navigate what often feels like a jumble sale.
The reason I founded Workplus was to make the early talent space place easier for everyone and create a platform which enabled cohesion, collaboration and connection. I don't believe an 18-year-old, neck-deep in exams, should have to make numerous, cumbersome applications to various apprenticeship opportunities. On the other side, I don’t want to see brilliant HR professionals feel so confused about the early talent space that they simply stick to how they’ve always recruited.
For this early talent space to be easier, we must have a user-centred and deeply collaborative approach.
We live and breathe user-centred services – think booking.com, Amazon and AirBnB, to name but a few. To truly transform the early talent space, we need to adopt this user-centred approach, both for employers as well as for young people and career changers.
Those user-centred services are deeply collaborative by nature – bringing together two distinct audiences, making it easier to connect and resulting in benefits neither could achieve by themselves.
If we want to tackle the skills challenge head-on and transform the early talent space for the betterment of employers and our people, we need to adopt a user-centred and deeply collaborative mindset. I’m not saying it will be easy, but I’m confident it would be worth it.
Workplus has a marketplace-style platform and is currently running an apprentice recruitment campaign with over 100 apprenticeship opportunities with employers across Northern Ireland. Applications close on 23rd February. For further information, visit www.workplus.app
This article appears in the skills, education and tech careers edition of Sync NI magazine. To receive a free copy click here.
