Future skills needs: Seven Questions
Published 29 August 2024
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North East Local Enterprise Partnership, 2021
The North East Local Enterprise used a futures process to inform investment and delivery decisions around skills.
What was the challenge?
The North East Local Enterprise Partnership (North East LEP) wanted to pilot innovative approaches to assessing future skills needs in the North East LEP area. In particular, it wanted to focus on the green economy and health and social care sectors, identified as being areas where there was growth potential or particular skills challenges identified by the North East Skills Advisory Panel. The outputs of this skills assessment would inform future investment and delivery decisions.
What was the approach?
As part of the research phase for this project, the North East LEP commissioned SAMI Consulting to run a seven-question exercise, designed to draw out participants’ views on the skills needs in the North East in ten years’ time, both generally and in the target sectors.
A critical factor in running the exercise was to bring in the perspectives of a range of interviewees. These included stakeholders with knowledge of the target sectors, core stakeholders from a skills advisory panel, education providers, and sector employers. To broaden perspectives further, they interviewed experts in energy innovation and social care, as well as Futures experts from outside the region to add novel and challenging perspectives.
Each of those interviewed was given the opportunity to express their general thoughts before being taken through the Seven Questions in detail. Interviews were carried out under the Chatham House rule, so that although interviewee names were in the final report, views were not associated with individuals. Notes of the interviews were shared with interviewees before being incorporated into the report.
The Seven Questions exercise identified sector-specific and overarching trends and uncertainties. The Seven Questions output was used, together with a horizon scanning exercise, to identify possible drivers of change and critical uncertainties, which were then used in scenario development to produce four potential futures.
Overarching uncertainties identified included:
- The impact of COVID-19 (continuing mental health effects, technology opportunities, speed of economic recovery from the pandemic)
- Implications of exit from the EU
- Outcome of government economic policies for the LEP
- Pace of adoption of technology
- The flexibility of responsiveness of the education system to changing skill needs.
What was the impact?
The evidence generated through this project has supported longer-term planning around skills provision in some of the North East’s key growth sectors, and has enabled the North East LEP to secure funding to upskill the current workforce into industries of the future.
Written in 2023.