The joy of TECs

A retrospective personal appraisal of HR in and outside the EU

Irrespective of political persuasion, few can fail to understand the thinking behind Boris Johnson’s post-transition skills development policy, aimed at boosting brainpower, driving up productivity and increasing corporate profits. Coming into effect on January 1, we won’t see results overnight.

Twenty years ago, government-funded Training and Enterprise Councils were all the rage – working in tandem with local authorities, educational establishments, community groups and the private sector, tasked with bringing out the best in adults’ personal and professional development.

The first Investors in People programmes nurtured a climate of collaboration between business and institutions, while a plethora of lifelong learning projects laid foundations for aspiration and achievement.

I was headhunted by urban regeneration specialist Professor Greg Clark to join a newly created partnership between London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) and London East Training and Enterprise Council (LETEC). From their respective headquarters in Baltic Quay and Aldgate East, our six-person ‘European Initiative’ team – led by Greg – project managed EU Objective 2 Structural Funds and Objective 3 HR Programmes.

London’s most dynamic district by far – Docklands Light Railway the first driverless monorail; the towering glass and steel of the newly opened Canary Wharf; weekly curry or pizza team lunch meetings along Brick Lane and Commercial Road – we knuckled down to the serious job of raising still untapped potential in this vibrant multicultural quarter.

Downing Street’s current antipathy to Europe aside, LDDC is former environment secretary Michael Heseltine’s most enduring legacy, singled out by the new prime minister as an example of Britain’s cutting-edge infrastructure projects on announcing the outcome of HS2 deliberations.

LETEC, meanwhile, was lead coordinator of six borough councils and transnational partnerships, collaborating as did TECs across the country on economic and skills development with colleges, universities and business owners through the network of Business Link support hubs, mentoring final year school pupils through the Work Foundation (formerly the Industrial Society).

In 1997, as the internet ‘superhighway’ began making inroads into offices of all types and sizes, my independent consulting team beat a leading management school to win Bedfordshire TEC’s bid requiring an assessment of SMEs’ attitudes to information and communications technologies.

Provided a database of 151 companies with 6 to 250 employees, directors of 29 were individually interviewed.

Asked, ‘Do you undertake R&D?‘; 74% did, 26% did not.

‘Are you currently working on R&D?‘; 53% yes, 47% no.

‘Do you have an R&D strategy?’; 42% yes, 58% no.

The three-month project culminated in an in-depth report and pilot service offering customised audits of industrial, materials, environment, life science, energy and transport technologies. Nineteen companies went on to take part in the CATs pilot (Customised Audits for Technology).

During the intervening years, developing and implementing tech strategies have necessarily risen high on business owners’ agendas. Adapting workers’ skills to take advantage of these advances must be top priority.

I’d earlier been seconded by Margaret Thatcher’s flagship London borough, Wandsworth, to oversee its role in TEKO – the Brussels-based Transnational European Knowledge Organisation, jointly administered by the Council and South Thames College alongside Belgian, Danish, Dutch, French and Spanish counterparts.

Sharing premises with EU agency CEDEFOP – European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training – we achieved a true sense of working for a common goal: networking, brainstorming, workshops, best practice benchmarking; our collective objective to assess and improve individuals’ personal capacity to make practical contributions to their respective economies, for their own short- and long-term benefit, and, in our case, for Britain’s bottom line.

Then and now, a degree of institutional hand-holding is central to corporate confidence-building, skills cultivation and innovation. Continuing this culture is key as British business owners broaden their horizons and prepare to go it alone.