Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to the first Worcestershire Growth Hub newsletter of 2023. I’d like to start by wishing you all a very happy New Year, and I really do hope you enjoyed a good festive break.

As we settle back into work. We are nearing the end of our financial year, and as always, that means that we will start to see some new funding programs come through and some old ones ending. So for that reason, there has never been a more important time to get in touch with the team, see what it is that you can benefit from, and what kind of support there is that you can access. One of our most popular programs has been our Specialist Professional Business Advisor program. This is where we link businesses to specialist advisors who are based around certain sectors, whether that’s marketing or access to finance.

These professional experts are able to come in and support a business and help us in a number of ways. We offer 1 to 1 support through this program, but we also offer a number of webinars. These webinars are based around some of the key issues that we have been hearing from our businesses. So they’re really, really relevant. I’d urge you to get in touch with the team to make sure you don’t miss out on any of this support.

We know that skills and recruitment remains a challenge for many businesses, and as a LEP, we’re really working hard to try and find a solution. We’re working with our partners to try and understand from our business community what skills and recruitment issues they have now, but also understand what sort of skills they’re going to need in future. We’re talking five years as well as 25 years. So how will your business be building and developing over the next 25 years? We’re looking to gather this information so that we can not only inform national government, but also locally influence our schools and our education providers to ensure that learners are leaving those places with the right skills and the necessary skills to be able to service our business community.

I cannot stress how important this survey is, and I would urge you to complete it if you have the chance. It doesn’t take long and the link is in the newsletter.

Finally, just a little reminder to make sure that you check the dates for your diary section at the end of this newsletter. There’s more and more events and webinars coming on board and we would love to see you there. Have a fantastic rest of January and I will see you in February.