Mick Jackson sets out his plans for the new NAC and its future role in meeting the needs of the industry
In the two years that Mick Jackson has been at the helm of Skills for Logistics, his feet have hardly touched the ground.
Successfully steering SfL through a long relicensing phase, restructuring the board and executive team, developing and launching numerous qualifications and training schemes, Mick Jackson has been busy since taking over in May 2008.
Talking to Commercial Motor magazine, Dr Mick Jackson explains: "When I took over as chief executive there were 24 people on the board, which was too many for an organisation of this size. We have stripped it down and are in the process of rebuilding it. It is seven-strong now, but the aim is to have a maximum of nine or ten," he says.
SfL has also reorganised the way it consults the industry by forming a national advisory council (NAC). Its first meeting was held in May with 25 members and there are plans for it to meet twice a year. The aim is to have no more than 40 people on the council.
"I had always envisioned setting up an NAC because I think it is a better way of doing things than having a big board."
Relicensing also provided an opportunity to review the set up of SfL’s team.
We needed to restructure the organisation around our core processes. We have pushed the decision-making down through the organisation." This involved switching from six directors to just two, with seven heads and 12 field managers. It also saw SfL move from a "research mentality to an intelligence mentality".
Core remit
As a Sector Skills Council, SfL has three things to do: develop national occupational standards; provide authoritative, labour-market intelligence for the sector; and raise employer engagement. "The third one is a challenge because there are 194,000 companies in our sector, 84% of which employ 10 people or fewer. We are just a 40-strong team, so to effectively engage with them all is a big task."
SfL has been focused on defining exactly what effective engagement means as it is "no good just saying we need to engage, we need to look at different levels of engagement".
As part of this, SfL runs its contacts database in the same way a sales team does, using customer relationship management software to monitor and log all communication with logistics firms
"We have 19,000 companies on our database and we probably have regular engagement with 1,000 of them. We have 43 companies that we are actively involved with, that is, they are on our board or they work as an ambassador for us."
On top of this, SfL has 600 companies that make up its geographic employer forums. "We consult with them every quarter on skills development issues such as Driver CPC, low carbon, health and safety; it is a really important contribution to our authoritative voice." SfL also consults the employer forum members annually on its three-year rolling business plan.
The biggest achievement for SfL over the past 18 months has been the establishment of six regional logistics academy hubs without any government funding. The hubs act as a network of quality-assured training providers, consisting of consortiums of further education colleges, universities, private training providers and, in some instances, local employers.
"We started working towards the hub-and-spoke regional academy system three years ago but, 12 months later, narrowly missed out in the funding rounds for the government’s National Skills Academy. We did not want to lose momentum, so we had to find a way to get the hubs off the ground without any government backing."
SfL found a way and now has 70 training providers across the six hubs.
"At the start of the year, we were finally successful in bidding for National Skills Academy status and anticipate having the National Skills Academy running in April 2011," Jackson says. The National Academy will sit above the six regional hubs.
The dream of a generic logistics apprenticeship is also moving closer. "We could not do it before because under the old qualification framework, all apprenticeships had to be in something specific, such as driving goods apprenticeships, storage and warehousing, traffic office and mail services. But now we are able to develop a generic one."
Priority sector
The key to getting the apprenticeship off the ground is that logistics is now one of the priority sectors of the government’s new National Apprenticeship Service.
"We have never been a priority sector before, so it is great news. Realistically, I would like to think the logistics apprenticeship could be available within a year. But the biggest problem is finding time to ask operators what they want. I could tell my team to write an apprenticeship but it will not deliver what is needed and be beneficial to our industry."
Jackson is aware that all the work behind the scenes over the past two years may have given the impression that SfL has not been doing much.
"Most of the work we have had to do has been infrastructure work," he says. "When we started, there were 47 learning and skills councils, each of which had a different funding regime and, because none of them understood logistics, they tended to focus their funding on sectors that they did understand.
"We have done a lot of work behind the scenes to try to build a fit-for-purpose infrastructure for the qualifications and for the delivery of the training. Most of it has been like ploughing through treacle – doing something fast in this industry means, if you are lucky, doing it in two years.
"I can understand why employers get frustrated with what they deem to be lack of progress, but it is finally all coming together now," he concludes.
Traditional qualifications
Employers in the freight logistics sector prefer bite-sized chunks of training rather "full-fat" qualifications. However, the government wants to fund more traditional qualifications because that is "where all the comparability comes from and where it feels it gets value for money".
"The classic example of bite-sized training in our sector is Safe and Fuel Efficient Driving (SAFED), which works. But if it works, the government will argue why do operators need government funding for it? If a firm immediately makes a 9% saving on its fuel as a result of SAFED, why should the government pay for that?"
The challenge for SfL is to balance what logistics employers need, with what the government wants.
"Logistics employers demand appropriate skilled workforce; relevant qualifications and programmes; consistent delivery in funding; improved access to quality training; and pathways into the sector.
"The government demands more for less. It wants a simplified skills system with employers at the centre; it wants increased employability; and it wants to develop what it calls the technician class [ie, apprenticeships]. Technician class is Level 3 and Level 4, so that is a junior manager or supervisor
"We also have to try to find different funding opportunities – for ourselves and for the sector."
