Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to the April edition of the Worcestershire Growth Hub newsletter. I do hope you’re settling in well to the new financial year. Despite the continuing existence of the seemingly never ending wet weather. Anyway, here are the Growth Hub the team. Have been out engaging with businesses about the new programs and funding opportunities available to you. As always, I’d encourage businesses to get in touch with the Growth Hub to find out more about how you can access these great new schemes that are highlighted in the newsletter.

First up this month I’d like to highlight our new skills and training funding scheme, SkillsBoost Worcestershire. This skills grant funding program allows organizations to upskill or retrain their Worcestershire based employees, and claim up to 50% of the costs back, up to a maximum of £6,000 per organisation. This is a great new scheme, made possible by investment from local government partners, that will make training more affordable and accessible for businesses. Please make sure you follow the link in the newsletter to find out more.

Sticking with the skills and training theme, wave five of the Skills Bootcamps program has now launched in Worcestershire too. This program can help employers to upskill and retrain existing staff members across a number of specific disciplines. Skills Bootcamps, sponsored by the Department for Education, allow employees to embark on carefully curated training programs that are aligned to their chosen career paths with renowned industry experts and mentors, providing guidance.

Wave five brings with it some new Skills Bootcamps disciplines, including areas such as I.T. and digital, health and social care, construction and sustainability, leadership and management, early years and childcare and warehousing and fabrication. Details on how to access these can be found in the newsletter.

Throughout April, we have a few events coming up in partnership with BetaDen, the first of which is a guide to grants for Innovative Businesses, which is taking place on the 18th of April, closely followed by an event on Google search engine changes, which takes place on the 22nd of April, and this will help businesses with their digital marketing and search engine optimisation, or SEO, for you guys in the know.

The Worcestershire Growth Hub team is also going to be at the Made Smarter Midlands event on how digital technology is changing Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering supply chains on the 23rd of April. Remember all of our upcoming events and the other business support events taking place across the county can be found on our Worcestershire Business Events calendar on our Growth Hub website.

Please follow the link in the newsletter to access this. As always, I hope you find the content in the newsletter informative. If there’s anything you would like to see more or less of in these, please let us know. We’re always looking to improve, equally if there are any programs, events or questions you would like support with, please contact the team and see how your business could be supported with the Worcestershire Growth Hub. See you next time, hopefully with some brighter weather.