Bryony Kingsland
Okay, so today Kerry, we're going to be chatting to Jane Vivian from West of England Combined Authority about GreenSkills because West of England have been doing some really great work looking at GreenSkills needs across their region and they're even doing a deep dive into the GreenSkills needs at the moment with Business West.
Kerry Dunkley
I think that we've got some pockets of some really good opportunities where the funding and the initiatives are being realised and certainly In the City of Bristol, the college there, we're working quite closely with their partners in Bristol to utilise what is becoming available from the work that Jane has been doing.
Bryony Kingsland
That's really good to hear. I mean, it's an interesting thing, isn't it? The whole green skills thing has sort of exploded, but it seems to me that Even though everybody's talking about it and green is probably the number one word on everyone's lips. It's the number one word on employer's lips. It's the number one word on in provider's lips.
We talk about it all the time, but none of us really seem to be fully on faith with what it actually means. I don't think employers are fully aware of what it means for them. They're not quite sure what they should be doing. Providers are struggling because of that to understand what they should be delivering.
So there's all sorts of challenges out there. That I think are going to be really interesting to unpack with Jane today. Absolutely right. Hi, Jane. Thanks for joining us today. It's absolutely brilliant to have you here. So Jane, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do inside the West of England Combined Authority?
Jane Vivian
Thank you. And thank you very much for having me here. So I'm Jane Vivian. I'm program manager at the West of England Combined Authority. overseeing the delivery of a number of skills funded programs across the combined authority area. So that includes the Skills Connect and Future Bright, Mayoral Priority Skills Fund, UKSPF, and lots of other things.
I also work with the other Mayoral Combined Authorities across the UK and DWP and DFE to think about what's coming next and make sure that the skills Those new skills programs dock into and land well into the region.
Bryony Kingsland
So Jane, can I just clarify UKSPF stands for UK Shared Prosperity Fund and that was the fund that the department for housing, leveling up communities, handed out to combined authorities and unitary authorities last year to support the leveling up agenda and West of England combined authority are using that as part of their skills provision.
Is that right?
Jane Vivian
Absolutely.
Bryony Kingsland
And the DWP and DFE stands for the Department of Work and Pensions and the Department for Education.
Jane Vivian
Yes, absolutely.
Bryony Kingsland
Brilliant. Thank you. Okay, so today we're going to be discussing green skills and as everybody knows, part of our analysis, the local skills improvement plans,
through up that every single region has got green skills priorities, but green skills are still not completely clear. And so West of England has been doing an awful lot of work looking at green skills. There's a deep dive going on in green skills at the moment through business West, looking at what the real skills needs might be in that area, both now and going forward in the future.
And Jane's going to talk to us about some of the work they're doing, but also some of the great projects they're putting in place. But first of all, Jane. Why should people care or want to take up a career in the green sector?
Jane Vivian
It's a really good question. So I don't know if you've seen, but we undertook a retrofit and also a green skills research study back in 2021.
And those studies set out really clearly the opportunity that's coming forward in the region in terms of green skills. I guess why people should care is because there's so many opportunities and more and more businesses are taking a real focus on their carbon footprint and, and also the delivery of their services and products.
So it's something that's going to be incorporated in lots of different job roles. I think people think that these are going to be brand new jobs. They're not, they're actually going to be, if you look at the reports that we undertook, lots of those job functions are existing jobs now, they will just have more focus on green skills.
So from an employer's perspective, if you're going to attract the next generation and the best of the talent out there, having a strong green focus is it. An organisation will help you to do that.
Bryony Kingsland
So Jane, just picking up on something that you said there, you were talking about green skills. There's a tendency, I think at the moment to almost think of green skills as an individual sector, but it's not really, is it?
It seems to be that the green skills and what we call in green skills, which can be sustainability, it can be carbon literacy, it can be net zero. is almost cutting across a whole variety of different sectors. Would you say that's the case?
Jane Vivian
Absolutely. So for example, we've got small accountancy firms here in the West of England who are now, they've designed and are delivering carbon accounting software.
So helping businesses. With their accountancy, but reducing their carbon footprint. So that's a really good example of where a traditional job role, i. e. accountancy is now incorporating green. There's other really good examples such as marketing. So looking at the colowurs you use in web design can draw different luminance.
So again, it reduces carbon footprint depending on the colour that you use. So some really good examples of careers and job functions that you wouldn't even Think of as having green elements, and I'm sure that will only continue to develop and grow into the future.
Bryony Kingsland
I would never ever have considered thinking about the actual inks that you're using when you're designing a marketing document to actually think about the effect that they are having on the environment. Wow. Okay, Kerry, I think you've got a question.
Kerry Dunkley
Yes, I have.
Thank you, Bryony. Jane, thinking about the kind of careers that lead into sustainability, carbon net zero, or green sector, do you think that young people fully understand where certain qualifications can take them within the green career sector?
Jane Vivian
Probably not fully at the moment, and we are on a journey, I'll be honest with you, so there's a lot of work that our Careers Hub's doing at the moment around that. We piloted what was called Green Futures Fund last year, a small pilot that looked to incorporate green curriculum. And also teacher transitions to help bring teachers out into industry to understand where there were green job opportunities and take that learning back into the classroom.
We've upscaled that project this year. And as I say, those teacher encounters is a really fundamental part of that. So it's helping careers advisors within schools and educators within the classroom. Come out into industry and understand the direction of travel around green skills and take that learning back to the classroom, but in the same vein, it's then asking the businesses to go into the classroom and to speak and communicate to the pupils now about what opportunity their business or their sector offers.
So it's bringing that. You know, education and business closer together to really help drive forward that understanding.
Kerry Dunkley
What a fantastic model. And from a kind of provider perspective, is there more that the training providers and colleges could be doing in this space to support this?
Jane Vivian
Yes, absolutely. And part of what we're doing as a combined authority is adopting The IFATE model of light, medium, dark green into the training.
So what we're starting to do now is think about when we're commissioning skills training. So is there a small amount of green training and consideration within that curriculum? Is it. Mid green. So there's quite a bit more, or is it dark green? I, it's actually what you would class as a green job through and through.
So we're starting to align ourselves with that national thinking to help those providers to understand from both the IFATE point of view, but also some of the training and development that we commission is all starting to align to help with building that.
Kerry Dunkley
And so IFATE is the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.
Jane Vivian
Also, we've employed a retrofit and green skills manager and part of her role is working with our delivery teams, but also those providers to understand where they could incorporate more green into the curriculum.
Bryony Kingsland
Brilliant. Thank you. Jane, expanding out on that, one of the issues that was identified in the local skills improvement plans is the challenges that particularly a further education sector have in recruiting staff that either have green skills, expertise, or knowledge, or actually finding a way to upskill their own staff to be able to deliver green skills and knowledge. Does the work that you're doing to upskill tutors and teachers in school expand out into the further education sector at post 16 as well?
Jane Vivian
You're right. It's an absolute issue. It's not just in the green space. We're hearing this over and over again, across all different areas of delivery that there aren't the educators available to deliver that education. So it is a key issue, not just in our region, across the UK, and it is actually something we're looking at through the employment and skills panel.
So how do we address this with some of our strategic stakeholders, which includes the FE colleges and. The Institute of Technology, our local authorities, the universities, Business West, all those organisations that sit on that panel. It has been flagged as, you know, this is a growing issue. So we are looking at how do we address it through our collective expertise and ability.
Bryony Kingsland
Brilliant.
So you've also spoken about Retrofit and you've also spoken about Green Futures. Now, what exactly is Green Futures?
Jane Vivian
So Green Futures is the project that's been delivered through the Careers Hub. So that's the project where we're bringing education and business closer together along with our keystone employers were really fortunate that our mayor has a really strong focus on the green skills agenda.
So, you know, that really does help. And also we're building the green skills agenda into our communications with existing providers, potential new providers, and key stakeholders for the employment and skills panel. It also features very strongly in our employment and skills plan. So green skills is woven across all All the objectives in that plan.
So some of the work that we've also been delivering is our community support fund, which has now rolled forward into Mayoral Priority Skills Fund and our UKSPF delivery. We've been looking at incorporating green environmental measures into our In our social value measures. So getting communities to think about green skills and then through that work, reaching people who might not have been interested in green skills before and helping them to, to direct them towards green skills training from entry level through a funded delivery all the way through to other provision and part of what our retrofit and green skills manager is doing is kind of mapping pathways from grassroots entry level, that pre employment, that pre training.
All the way through up to level six and beyond so that it helps people to understand that even if they're engaging at a community level around green skills, there is an opportunity to build a career from that. So we're really starting to build a kind of a long term ecosystem around green skills rather than short training.
And then also we've got our mayoral priority skills fund short stackable modular training, which again, we've started to test and learn Where there might be gaps around green skills training in different sectors and different areas of business need. We've also got the Retrofit West project. So this is very specifically looking at how we can drive up the take up of retrofit measures in the able to pay market in the West of England.
Now it's a triangulation. Project. So we've got at the core of it is a community engagement piece. So working with communities to understand the benefits of retrofit and why you should take up retrofit measures in your home, i. e. helps reduce bills, reduces your carbon footprint, etc, etc, we've also got a skills piece there.
Because what that project's doing is working also with the business community. So looking at how do we get businesses to take up more training and development to be able to then implement the retrofit measures that are coming through the community engagement. And then finally, In terms of the wider, I guess, profile of what we're doing, we hold an annual skills summit, the Mayors Skills Summit each year, and we've purposely ensured that it's focused on learning in work progression, specifically with green skills as a focus, so people can see that.
You haven't missed the boat. If you haven't studied something that's around green skills with lifelong learning, you can continue now to pick up new skills and go down a pathway that might be more green if you want to.
Bryony Kingsland
I'm going to ask why is retrofit so important?
Jane Vivian
Well, I think retrofit is really important from a community cohesion point of view.
We're seeing through the community energy grants that we've been giving out that it brings communities together in a way that maybe they wouldn't have come together. It will help raise awareness of why, as a resident and a homeowner, you should be interested in retrofit and the environment. So I think as well as the savings and the benefit to an owner occupier in terms of the reduction of their bills, I think there's a much wider benefit that we'll see grow over time.
Bryony Kingsland
That's really useful. Thanks, Jane.
The other question I was going to ask is how do you engage a community? I mean, how do you actually go out to an entire community and engage them in something like that?
Jane Vivian
That's a really interesting question, and we've got so many ways in which we're engaging communities.
So from kind of the community learning point of view, there's the marketing activities via social media, there's work with companies such as Babasa who are really linked into certain communities as well. There's also work that's coming forward through Bristol Temple Quarter, working with whole communities.
range of communities around community inclusion. So, you know, as a combined authority, we have to work with our other stakeholders who are very close to the communities that we're, we're targeting.
I think Kerry's got a question she wanted to ask about the equality and diversity in the region. And I know that Babassa are working with you along those lines.
Kerry.
Kerry Dunkley
Thank you. So, yes. How is the combined authority encouraging greater equality and diversity in the green workforce? But also in general, across the West of England region.
Jane Vivian
Yeah. So there's a lot of being delivered and will continue to be delivered around equality and diversity. It is built into absolutely everything that we do.
It's a core component of any commissioning and we look very closely at which groups our funding and programme delivery will go to. So for example, the Community Support Fund and Mayoral Priority Skills Fund. They're looking at all the different types of communities and where we might have under representation or we know we've got issues with reaching certain communities and we make sure that we direct.
Some of our delivery into those communities. And then we've got support services that we've worked really hard to put in place through our local authorities, which then helps those individuals to find targeted and individualised support to be able to progress at whatever part of their journey they're on.
So what we do with all our deliveries, think about the gaps and who we're not currently reaching and how can we reach them. through our existing partnerships and get them into the provision that we've got in place and then continue to support them.
Bryony Kingsland
One of the things we discussed in the employability sessions with our young learner advisory team was how sometimes employers, without even realising they're doing it, can produce adverts for new staff out there that actually almost put some people off applying for that job. That in itself, shrinking the available pool of candidates that employers have access to, which we know that they don't want to do because we've got skills shortages at the moment.
Last time you and I chatted, you were talking about some work that you were doing in that area with, with a particular organisation in the West of England. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Jane Vivian
Yeah. So I'm not directly involved in that, but I know that the team that are running the Good Employment Charter are engaging with Babassa and other organisations to help with exactly that.
So looking at that recruitment piece, looking at how you diversify your workforce, how you look at your recruitment practices, and also your supporting your employees. once they're in their job to retain and remain in that job as well. There's another project that we're also commissioning and running is we work for everyone.
So that's looking at neurodivergent and in particular, those with autism. So there's a team they've been delivering for a number of years. support for individuals to help them to access job opportunities and then remain in those job opportunities.
Bryony Kingsland
Yeah. Well, you know, that's something that's very close to my heart because as you know, I'm neurodivergent myself and I have ADHD.
So yeah, that's, that's a really interesting piece of work that you're doing. I'd love to find out more about that. Maybe at a later date in another podcast. Yeah. We're thinking about doing a, yeah, definitely thinking about doing a podcast on neurodivergent employment.
Jane Vivian
Yeah, we're just about to work on, on the next iteration of that and how that docks into Skills Connect.
So Skills Connect is our, the joining up of the ecosystem. So we've got teams of advisors at the local authorities that they can then sign post individuals to. Something like we work for everyone, or it might be a restart program or some, you know, all, whatever their individual needs are, those advisors can help to signpost people because what we recognize was the skill system is so complex.
And we as professionals. Struggle to navigate it. So how can we expect our residents to navigate it?
Bryony Kingsland
There's some really amazing work going on down in the West of England. That's really inclusive. And there's so many different ways that your learners and your residents can actually access skills and improve their skills.
Thinking about that, what other best practice would you want to share with either other mayoral combined authorities or local authorities or other regions that are are looking at how to either implement some of the findings from their local skills improvement plans or, or implement more of a, a green skills or a more inclusive approach to accessing skills and accessing learning and accessing that increasing need to have lifelong learning as part of your career path because things are changing so quickly.
Jane Vivian
So I'd start with the fact that we as a combined authority have now rolled out the carbon literacy training to all our staff. And that really does help you to think about the environmental impact of your job role. We'd love for other organizations in the region to do something similar. And we're actually offering organizational sustainability as a bootcamp.
And if they want that training, there's absolutely the ways and means that we can put that in place here in the West of England, other good practices, the business support that's available through our growth hub, they now got six Greening your business support programme. So that's anything from leadership and management through to finance and accessing loans where they're available and grants through to speaking to experts.
So lots of advice and guidance is available. We've also got the good employment charter, which is working with a number of organisations in the West of England, thinking about their ability to recruit individuals within their organisation and thinking about kind of how they can improve themselves as organisations.
And that links into then the growth hub support and also the, for example, the carbon grants that are available for businesses who want to do a carbon survey. So there's lots of best practice. I guess, you know, our challenge is linking all that up because there's a skills component to all of that. So we need to make sure that we're addressing then some of the skills needs that might be flagged by that work and engagement with the business community.
Bryony Kingsland
It's great to hear about the carbon literacy. We've had exactly the same project here inside City & Guilds because we've asked ourselves that same question, which is how can we put out qualifications and programmes and content that employers and their learners want to take up that's around green skills, that's around carbon literacy, that's around retrofit If we're not actually walking the walk ourselves and so Kirstie, our CEO and the executive team said, okay, everybody, carbon literacy training, the entire business needs to start picking this up.
So I've done probably the exact same carbon literacy training and I think Kerry's also done it that you've done. And yes, you're right. It really makes you question that impact that you have as an individual.
Jane Vivian
So part of what we're doing as well is developing those green career pathways and maps. And then training the frontline advisors who are delivering that support to individuals who skills connect and future bright to understand what information and in what format would be really helpful to them to then advise individuals who might be interested in green careers and different pathways.
And then taking all that learning. Presenting those pathways and those maps and then making them available. And we'll be continuing to do that training with those coaches. So we'll now be speaking to them about here's the pathways. So the first one went live on skills connect last week, and that's the heating and plumbing pathway link specifically to retrofit.
Bryony Kingsland
Wow. So, are those maps that are just available for careers advisors, they're not available to learners?
Jane Vivan
No, no. So, they're not currently, but they will be and can be. And the whole idea of those maps is that you can see from entry level all the way through types of qualifications that you can take and what careers and jobs that you can access by taking those.
So, it's building a, I guess, a map, a visual. of where you can go by doing specific training in your career. Wow, that's a massive step forward.
Bryony Kingsland
But that's also a really complex job because those pathways are a bit like the branches of a tree. You start off with a sort of trunk of taking a specific qualification.
But my own knowledge of a career is that that can actually branch out into all sorts of different areas. So, you know, I'm assuming that going forward, you'll need to continue on with that work because the reality is as green skills develop and as our knowledge of what automation and technology is going to do to the skills landscape, those pathways
will also expand.
Jane Vivian
Absolutely. And that's the idea. We've created a, a blueprint now that this will be rolled out to other sectors. So we're starting with the retrofit because obviously the retrofit West programme will be generating. Absolutely. Demand from the homeowners. So then that will generate kind of the, the demand for training for the businesses.
And then obviously then we can help support residents who are accessing our support services through Skills Connect and Future Bright to access that skills training.
Bryony Kingsland
Brilliant. Jane, thank you so much for joining us today, everybody. This has been Jane Vivian, who is the Programme Manager at the West of England Combined Authority, talking about the best practice that West of England are implementing in their programmes, in their region to address the skill shortages identified in the local skills improvement plan. Thanks so much, Jane. It's been really great to have you and really interesting to hear what you're doing in your region.
Jane Vivian
Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Kerry Dunkley
Thank you.
Everyone
Bye. Bye.
