Skills and Innovation in Modern Workplaces

An ESRC Future of Work Programme Seminar Series

Robert Taylor

http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/fow_publication_6_tcm6-6061.pdf

 

THE NEED TO CREATE A MORE SKILLED WORKFORCE for employment in high performance workplaces producing high quality/high value products and services has become an important priority for Britain’s policy-makers. P.1

 

we have the opportunity to take advantage of our outstanding science and technology base and  compete on the basis of our knowledge, creativity and skills”, he explained in March 2003. But Lord Sainsbury added that the key to genuine improvements in innovation lay through the encouragement of more skills training among employees, especially in the new advanced areas of information and telecommunications technology.p.1

 

also reflects an apparent determination to close the continuing productivity gap that has existed between Britain and the country’s main industrial competitors on global markets – the United States, France and Germany.p.1

 

Department of Trade and Industry from Professor Michael Porter and Christian Ketels at the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, has drawn our attention to the familiar problems of how to improve Britain’s competitiveness. As they explained: “On skills, the UK lags behind the United States in the share of high skill employees in the labour force and also has a slightly higher share of low skill employees. The UK has a significantly lower share of intermediate skill employees than Germany and France, p.1

 

A plethora of public government-funded organisations are now being mobilised to focus national attention on the urgent need to improve skills development and implement a programme to achieve this across both the manufacturing and services sectors of the economy.p.2

 

“Too many firms today are trapped in a low skills equilibrium where they are competing on price in low value added product sectors and demanding low skilled, low cost labour”, Lord Sainsbury. P.2

 

At the Lisbon summit conference of European heads of government held in March 2000 all agreed that they should commit themselves to the strategic objective of transforming Europe “into the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion by 2010”.p.2

 

As the 2002 official Skills in England survey has argued: “There is now a wealth of evidence that demonstrates the acquisition of skills by either individuals or employers is associated with higher earnings, increased productivity and greater job security. Civil society appears to benefit from a more educated population, much as high-minded nineteenth century utilitarians like John Stuart Mill hoped”.p.3

 

In the latest skills survey nearly a quarter of all companies employing more than a million workers between them reported that their labour forces were not as skilled as they needed to be for improved business performance.p.3

 

It is apparently self-evident that the country needs to commit itself to the development of a high skills/high performance economy if it hopes to survive and prosper in the harsher, more unforgiving competitive world of globalisation. P.3

 

Future of Work Programme, the ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance and the ESRC Centre for Organisation and Innovation, the gathering was able to benefit from a valuable exchange of information and opinions from a wide and diverse range of knowledge and expertise.

 

the importance of transforming the country into a high skill information and knowledge economy may be inspirational but the gap between its perceptions and the reality we face.p.4

 

the hope that this may stimulate further public debate in a policy area where we have lacked sufficient constructive dialogue for far too long.p.5

 

 

we must try to integrate any future skills and innovation strategies within the wider context of the changing dynamics that exist both inside our workplaces and perhaps above all in the strategic thinking of employers and managers who want to compete and modernise.p.5

 

The fragmentation of responsibility inside government is not only diffused across many departments and public agencies which leads to an inevitable confusion and division as well as duplication of effort but it also means the lack of a coherent policy response to workplace realities.p.5

 

new forms of public intervention are required if Britain stands any prospect of becoming a predominantly high skills, knowledge-based economy. Merely chanting the mantra - training, training, training - will not prove sufficient.p.7

 

It would also be used as the exemplar of best practice, consumers would be encouraged to become more discriminating in their demands and convince firms of their need to move from the low to the high road in the provision of higher quality goods and services. Tax incentives might also assist in the development of organisational change by encouraging the improvement of workplace behaviour.p.8

 

Campaing

we must develop a much more concerted and wide-ranging strategy that stimulates a transformation in management attitudes to workplace organisation. The alternative is really to do nothing. As they put it: “We are then left with the dawning realisation that the kind of world advocated by the evangelists of the skills revolution will simply not happen, at least for the majority of firms, without sustained support and intervention and the possibility of continuing to pursue supply side policies that are both expensive and ultimately ineffective but which are the only kinds of policies that are believed to be feasible.”p.8

 

we must launch a more determined policy drive to actively encourage more firms to take the high road approach to skills and innovation.p.8

 

in encouraging the wider use of information technology and a development in team methods of production.p.8

 

These figures suggest we are creating a much more skilled and educated workforce in the labour market.p.8

 

we are experiencing much more individual mismatch between labour demand and the suitable supply of workers.p.8

 

The research concludes, if only tentatively, that a growing number of organisations may be entering a period in which the widespread use of information technology can enable them to become more internally flexible in the way they organise work.p.10

 

What is unquestionable is that information and telecommunications technology is making individual employees much more versatile and capable of carrying out an increasing range of skill functions in their jobs. But earlier findings from the LSE/PSI project suggest the existence of a digital divide with less opportunity for manual workers to learn and exercise those new information-based skills although their knowledge of information technology is substantial from the use of computer skills at home.p.10

 

most important conclusion from the analysis of skills formation is that modernising organisations are unlikely to make much progress if they pursue strategies that failto relate their skill needs to the supply of labour available. P.11

 

the need for us to concentrate more on the importance of internal flexibility of labour inside firms to promote innovation and improved performance.p.12

 

In the Finnish case the linkage between research and workplace development is seen as crucial to the programme’s success. Just as important, has been the commitment to full participation by workers as well as managers in workplace modernisation. It also helped to bring in outside consultants, educational institutions such as technical universities and research institutes and development agencies in the formation and implementation of workplace modernisation. The creation of quality learning networks from the integration of such groups has played a crucial role in sharing knowledge and developing trust inside and between companies.p.15

 

Most of the general skills, such as versatility in languages and mathematics, as well as the development of social intelligence, last a whole working life but basic vocational training and learning specific vocational skills do not. He suggested it was a myth to argue that workers should be prepared to change their occupation several times in their working life.p.16

 

CAUSE

Profesor Peter Nolan and Gary Slater point out that the emphasis in practice on the production of low skill and low value products and services continues to remain a powerful one. (12) The barriers remain formidable to “the construction of a vibrant, technologically advanced and knowledge intensive workforce”.p.19

 

The emergence of the so-called new economy is usually assumed to mean the creation of more information and knowledge workers, who are highly skilled and motivated, well paid and individualistic. But we have also seen a perhaps far larger growth in low skill, low paid jobs that are more insecure and stressful than the old ones.p.19

 

As Professor Porter has pointed out, Britain has a larger proportion of its workforce that is unskilled and unqualified than its commercial rivals. This is the inevitable result of having a flexible external labour market and lightly imposed minimalist regulation shaping most workplaces.p.20

 

This is why public policy-makers need to turn much more of their attention to the changing needs of workplaces and the actual structure and skills content of jobs.p.20

 

We need to place our future skills and innovation agenda in this wider context of that fast-moving and volatile political economy. P.21

 

This seeks to develop policies that can encourage the adaptability of employees, motivate workers to stay in jobs with their existing organisations but also to accept redeployment when necessary in accommodating workplace change.p.21

 

Texto a revisar:

Skills In Their Workplace Context: Where are we going and will this take us to where

we want to be? Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew.