Skills for the future

The Future Skills Zone makes its debut at IMHX 2016 and is designed to highlight the careers available to young people in Britain’s logistics sector. With over 200,000 companies employing around 2.5 million people, logistics as an industry is the fifth largest employment sector in the country.

The Future Skills Zone features leading employers from across the sector and aims to show youngsters they don’t need to choose university as their route to a good career – and that a vocational route can take them into highly skilled managerial positions, but without the considerable debt burden following graduation.

Leading companies across the UK are crying out for ambitious and motivated young people to take on interesting and challenging roles in logistics and allied industries and those participating in the Zone include leading forklift truck manufacturers Toyota Material Handling, and Linde Material Handling, whose apprentices will be stripping down and rebuilding a vehicle, Crown and Jungheinrich.

The former BITA Academy, now the new Forklift Training Engineering Centre (F-TEC), the industry’s training centre for apprentices and engineers, will also be providing information on apprenticeships.

“We aim to show the brightest and the best that they don’t need to choose university as their route to a good career”, said James Clark, BITA secretary general. “F-TEC and others will be on hand to show how vocational qualifications can provide a path into managerial positions.”

Aftersales director for Linde Material Handling UK, Mark Sullivan, adds: “We received a record number of applications for our apprenticeship scheme in last year’s intake, showing young people perceive them to be really useful for career progression. Each year we’re seeing apprentices reaping the rewards, learning new things and setting themselves up for a fantastic future in the materials handling industry."

Toyota Material Handling UK

Toyota Material Handling UK will be hosting a careers stand alongside their main exhibition stand throughout IMHX 2016 to showcase the wide range of career opportunities available within the organisation. Located at stand SK3 between halls 8 and 9 in the dedicated Future Skills Zone, the stand will be led by the training team alongside current service technician apprentices who will be available to talk about their experiences and display the skills they have learnt as part of their development programmes.

The stand is themed around the career paths you can take within Toyota and the different opportunities available to both young and experienced people within Toyota. During each day there will be live demonstrations of the practical skills which apprentice service technicians learn which will include mechanical engineering, forklift truck servicing and fault finding along with the option to see some of the sales tools used to demonstrate key elements of Toyota’s equipment.

Commercial director, Tony Wallis says: “We are always looking towards the future at Toyota whether that is in our technology or the development of our team. This is why we feel that having a stand dedicated to careers will help inform people about the opportunities a career with Toyota can provide and also the longevity it can lead to within our company”.

National Logistics Academy

Taking a broader look at the skills landscape beyond the IMHX show, we see the newly launched National Logistics Academy has assembled a nationwide network of logistics training providers to deliver a uniform product from 45 locations in England, Scotland and Wales, working under a single brand. Chief Executive Mark Currie (pictured) explained that the decision to create Academy was stimulated by major logistics companies who were frustrated that there was no single provider that could meet all their training and development needs at all their locations across the country.

This need has come into sharper focus more recently as large businesses are starting to get to grips with the introduction in April 2017 of the government’s Apprenticeship Levy. According to Mark: “The sector needs to be able to call upon the support of a single, specialist organisation that has the expertise and resources to deliver workforce development programmes and skills training courses to logistics companies that operate throughout the UK. The system is very similar to that of pallet networks except our product is people development, instead of the movement of freight.”

All customer contact will be through the Academy Hub in Manchester where staff will be able to schedule, monitor and report on each learner’s individual training and development programme utilising a centralised IT portal. The National Logistics Academy will by the end of the year offer the full range of logistics training programmes starting now with Driver CPC, LGV licence acquisition and forklift truck training followed later in the year by Transport Manager CPC and logistics apprenticeships.

The Academy’s first customer, Garry Lewis, Transport Standards Manager, Group Logistics and Supply Chain, Tarmac said: “We were looking for a national solution. Somebody who can deliver to a consistent and high standard of training whether it is driver licence acquisition or Driver CPC or even developing our management. And we want them to do that whether it be London, Birmingham or Scotland.”

Brexit implications

Operationally, Brexit may have some serious impacts on the supply chain, not least in the area of skills, according to David Coombes, founder and managing director of Logistics Job Shop.

He explains: “In terms of recruitment, employers will tell you that recruiting qualified, experienced, dedicated staff is not without challenge. The driver shortage has long been discussed, but there are issues elsewhere in the supply chain too. Across the board, particularly in technical roles, our sector has become reliant on people who were not born in the UK. If we have a points based immigration system, will the supply chain sector be protected and supported?”

Coombes thinks freedom of movement is likely to be restricted following our leaving of the EU. “Who knows what market corrections may come in the next two years, but ceteris paribus, conceivably fewer qualified people will be available to work in the sector, meaning even more competition for high calibre candidates. Simple supply and demand laws tell us that prices, in this sense wages, may rise.”

He also questions the future of Driver CPC. “Why would we abide by a previous European directive now? If DCPC is already on its way into the history books why would any drivers complete it in this cycle? Have we opened up a return route for the drivers who decided to leave the sector in 2014? The driver shortage was previously mitigated by individuals from Europe. Will the future solution be the recently retired?

“Of course, it seems likely that international staff will still have to be compliant, but at a stroke, have we removed the need for couriers, bus drivers, UK only drivers, to complete DCPC?”

Neil Ashworth, CEO of CollectPlus, argued at the recent Scala Logistics Debate that the logistics industry must take the lead and make its case to the politicians negotiating the UK’s exit from the EU. “We import more than we export. We should explain the influence we have on the UK economy as supply chain professionals. Indeed, four major industry bodies met least week for first time to create a combined lobby to Government. It was not created for Brexit, but it will be about that. It’s good the logistics industry is coming together to stand up and be counted,” he says. The four bodies are The Freight Transport Association (FTA), the Road Haulage Association (RHA), the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) and the Institute of Road Transport Engineers (IRTE).

The UK Supply Chain sector will find a way to overcome challenges and will prosper. But the future will be different from the current situation, and, as ever, there will be winners and losers.