Wales Needs a Skills System Designed Around Small Businesses

The useful part

Josh Miles Head of Wales Federation of Small Businesses Learning has the power to transform lives and, for small businesses, it can transform prospects too. Persistent skills gaps act as a brake on SME investment, constrain ambition and hold back productivity. Yet smaller firms face disproportionate barriers to training, including, time, mentoring capacity and finance.

How it works

• ` Provision works where employers have trusted relationships with colleges, providers or advisers.
• Too often, however, it is fragmented, slow and inaccessible to a time-poor microbusiness balancing costs, staff-release pressures and commercial needs.
• For a firm with no HR department, these barriers can delay expansion, technology adoption and new contracts, with owners absorbing work that should be delegated.
• It should recognise employer investment, upskill the existing workforce, make provision responsive to demand and give SMEs a clear route to support.
• The public conversation about skills still concentrates overwhelmingly on young people entering the workforce, rather than the people already working in Welsh businesses.

What to take from it

A visible brokerage service connected to Business Wales could diagnose needs, find provision and aggregate demand across small firms. Small businesses do not need another static map of the problem, but a responsive partnership that helps them invest, innovate and grow. That is why the Federation of Small Businesses' response to the Welsh Government commissioned Skills Audit calls for a system built around SMEs' day-to-day realities.

Example or evidence

• Short, credit-bearing, stackable modules would build practical skills alongside work and help businesses respond to new opportunities.
• Build the skills system around SMEs and Wales will strengthen productivity, resilience and opportunity.
• On that broad comparison, it would take more than a quarter of a century for new entrants to equal today's workforce.
• Initial education is vital, but Wales cannot meet its productivity, digital, net-zero and demographic challenges by focusing on new entrants alone.

Details worth keeping

The Audit must therefore do more than list shortages. Central to our case is a national commitment to in-work learning. Most of the next decade's workforce is already employed and cannot pursue a full qualification whenever a role changes.

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