Video Transcript
Hello and welcome to the October edition of Worcestershire Growth Hub’s newsletter. This edition contains lots of information on activities and events happening across the county to support your business. A few weeks ago, we delivered our second Worcestershire Business Forum, focusing on skills and recruitment as directed by local businesses. It was fantastic to see so many of you in the room advising and informing us on your challenges and also suggestions for how we can support you and your business in the future. Watch this space as new support programmes come on board.
On the theme of skills we have the New Skills Bootcamps programme available for Worcestershire businesses. This is training support open to businesses who are looking to upskill existing staff. We have a full article on the website where you can find out more and sign up to develop your future workforce as well as hopefully support those recruitment challenges that some of you are experiencing. We are also working with the Careers Hub on a digital skills survey. In today’s environment, digital skills are crucial for any organization. We’re working to help develop the county’s digital skills strategy, which will in turn identify areas of opportunity for future support initiatives. Click the link in the article. We’re asking for 5 minutes of your time to help us help you with your digital skills.
I’m pleased to share that our Professional Advisor programme is going strong, with over 80 businesses already accessing the scheme and benefitting from the 1 to 1 support. This scheme is open until March and any Worcestershire business is eligible. Have a look on our website for the areas of support available and how you can sign up. When I spoke before, I mentioned that as part of the scheme we would be running some events and the next one is fast approaching. This is with our Workforce Planning Advisor Hewett Recruitment and they are talking about the current challenges in recruiting and retaining staff and how developing a positive culture, company culture can help. Here’s Laura giving you a flavour of what’s in store.
Laura Hewett, Co-Owner and Director at Hewett Recruitment
“So when a business is considering developing a really positive company culture, there are three main things to consider. Number one, it’s having a really solid company purpose and set of values. Number two is diversity, to make sure we’ve got a lovely, inclusive working environment. And number three, leadership development to help us embed that culture all the way through the organisation. We ourselves at Hewett Recruitment have been through this journey in the last couple of years and we’ve been helping work with our clients on it, too.”
And finally, Government asking businesses to provide details on their journey to achieving net zero. The challenges and opportunities you’re experiencing and what more could be done. This information will help to inform strategy moving forwards. Have a look in the newsletter for this article. If you have a spare 5 minutes. As always, if you have any questions or require any support, I urge you to get in touch with the team at the Growth Hub, details on your screen.
There are a number of business support events coming up over the next month or so, so if I don’t see you there, I look forward to speaking to you again in November.