Newham College have recently created and launched a new department, Business Skills Solutions, responsible for working collaboratively across all learning provision outside of the mainstream 16 to 18 further education programme.
Matt Fawcett, Executive Director, Strategy & Innovation at Newham College, who oversees the department, said:
Business Skills Solutions has been designed as a unique and responsive department within the college to provide bespoke learning opportunities to young people and adults to meet the needs of both businesses and those seeking work.”
Responsible for the direction, development and delivery of the college’s apprenticeship provision, BSS also drives all of Newham College’s adult (19+) employability focussed courses, securing project funding and creating working partnerships with employers and referral partners in order to offer a range of programmes that help local and regional businesses and the community to come together.
Among the programmes and projects that the department is responsible for delivering are:
Get into Healthcare; aimed at providing unemployed adults with the skills and knowledge to help them secure employment within the health and care sector
Innovation Fund, delivering English and Maths courses to NHS and health and care sector employees
Digital Skills Courses, delivering key skills to help those looking for work to be more job-ready.
In addition, the department has recently run a hugely successful Business Professionals Traineeship, securing work placements for 20 young people to gain real-world skills in the workplace, after having completed a four-week preparation course including business and digital pathway qualifications as well as career planning and employment preparation sessions.
At the moment, BSS is involved in organising a funded COVID-response programme, the first in a series, aimed at helping unemployed young people from the Newham area to gain highly sought-after digital skills and providing them with a bursary of £300 to help towards travel costs and purchasing clothing for interviews.
Our remit is a wide one, but focussed on two main areas,”
said Matt Harvey, Director for Business Development.
We work closely with local, regional and national employers to listen to their needs in terms of the training and upskilling of staff and in relation to their issues when recruiting and on-boarding new staff. We then look to create suitable learning opportunities that fill those gaps; whether a Level 6 digital degree apprenticeship or a programme designed to provide candidates with much needed soft-skills, such as confidence building and communication in the workplace.”
In order to service those customers and clients, Business Skills Solutions works in a triangular partnership between referral sources; organisations working with potential candidates for learning programmes seeking work, re-training or upskilling and employing organisations, to help them to identify skills gaps and to create bespoke programmes using existing funded learning opportunities or by implementing new commercial training courses or apprenticeship standards to meet demand.
Andy Marriott, Business Skills Solution’s Partnership Engagement and Development Manager, said:
We have close working relationships with a large number of organisations that are involved in providing support services to people around London, including community groups, housing associations and the JobCentre Plus network. We have over 1,000 partner organisations on our database and we communicate with them on a regular basis to share the range of programmes on offer to their clients.”
Rooted in East London, but with connections as far and wide as Bolton and Brighton in terms of delivery of learning, Business Skills Solutions embodies a local yet global approach to its offering, providing end-to-end apprenticeship managed services to companies around the UK involving initial training and learning needs analysis, design and planning of delivery, sourcing and onboarding of talent and ongoing support for both learners and businesses alike.
The team are looking to expand their presence across the business community in London and looked to All Things Business as the perfect partner to help them to promote their opportunities and offer support to organisations across the capital that may be looking to recruit new staff at all levels after the pandemic effects start to settle or to upskill existing staff ready to take on new challenges.
Matt Harvey added:
To be honest we jumped at the chance to attend the launch of All Things Business, not only to start the face-to-face networking process again and shake off some cobwebs, but because the whole idea of the publication and the community that it is looking to serve is something that we believe we should be involved with and offering our services to.”
For advice and support with apprenticeships, staff training, bespoke courses, recruitment support through pre-employment training, work experience organisation or upskilling of existing workforce, contact the team at Business Skills Solutions.
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Email Matt.Harvey@newham.ac.uk