2023: The Year of the Digital Upskill | Skills for Growth in Greater Manchester

The B2W Group has delivered employed and unemployed opportunities in the Greater Manchester region for over a decade, and now a post-covid world, digital takes centre stage in the Government’s agenda to upskill and improve the careers of the nation.

Within the Government’s plans is Skills for Growth: the national skills strategy. Many jobs today need digital skills – they are not reserved only for those working in IT and specialist computer-based careers. You need them even for jobs that do not ask for high levels of qualifications or experience. For example, if you work in a warehouse or a shop you may keep digital records of stock. You also need digital skills every day for shopping, banking, and keeping in touch with family and friends. Half of all employers say they cannot find candidates with advanced digital skills. Roles requiring digital skills often pay more than those that do not (https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/careers-advice/build-foundation-digital-skills-to-help-your-career)

At the launch of Skills for Growth, Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson said: “As the rate of technological change increases, further education will be crucial to building an agile and adaptable workforce. Provision will be flexible – whether full-time or part-time; on-the-job or off-the-job; a first ever job, or a change of career.  Everyone will have the chance to retrain, update their skills and move into growth sectors, when they need to.”

The B2W Group delivers Digital Skills for Growth in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Coding, and Project Management. These skills make up a wide range of business-critical functions which look to become even more integral in 2023 and beyond. As workforces and lifestyles return to normal. 2023 is the “Year of the Upskills” and looks to see people grow their skills (and careers) faster than ever before.

Microsoft Excel & Power BI

A quick search for online courses in Microsoft Excel and its lesser-known “business intelligence interactive data visualization software” Power BI turns up tens of thousands of courses on training websites across Udemy and Reed alone.

Microsoft Excel is one of those tools used in most businesses. Other options include Apple’s Numbers and Google Sheets, but with the market dominance of Microsoft’s business packages, Excel is the be-all-end-all for data management and storage.

According to figures (https://www.microbizmag.co.uk/microsoft-excel-statistics/), Excel is accessed by a whopping 1.1 billion people – which translates to 1 in 8 people around the world. Figures also suggest that Microsoft Office users typically spend more than a third of their time (38%) using Excel.

Excel makes it easy to manage data and visualise information. Of the available options for data analytics, Excel offers arguably the best balance of power and accessibility; spreadsheets provide powerful functionality such as graphs, pivot tables, and formulas, but are more accessible than advanced tools such as SQL.

It’s used across departments in most businesses – finance, accounts, marketing, sales, senior management, admin, and more. Excel is the Swiss Army Knife for business data analytics. It is a powerful yet accessible jack-of-all-trades solution for business needs such as quick data storage and manipulation, collaboration with data, automating tasks, and more.

Although a business may want to use more advanced tools as they scale, most businesses can save time, get the answers they need, and ensure smooth operations on the day-to-day by using spreadsheet technologies. Ultimately, Excel is the most easy-to-learn and widely-used data analytics tool for businesses, and that’s not going to change.

For those businesses looking to leverage those more advanced data analysis tools, comes Microsoft’s Power BI.

Launched in 2011, Microsoft’s marketing for Power BI is not nearly as slick and easy-to-grasp as its 1990s ancestor. Microsoft describes it as “an interactive data visualization software product with a primary focus on business intelligence”. Any wiser?

In a nutshell. Power BI is able to absorb vast amounts of data in various forms (sheets, tables, graphs), and, with the click of a button, turn it into easy-to-digest visuals for presentations or interpretation. It allows users to engage and interact with data in new, intuitive and natural ways.

Power BI’s second selling point is its collaboration abilities thanks to integration with Excel and its Cloud-based setup. In Power BI workspaces, teams share the ownership and management of their dashboards, reports, datasets, and workbooks.

Sometimes Power BI users organise their workspaces based on organisational structures, or they create them for specific projects. Other organisations use several workspaces to store different versions of reports or dashboards they use. Workspaces provide roles that determine what permissions your co-workers have, and those roles determine who can manage the workspace, edit and distribute, or just view content.

Power BI is the step up from Excel; after a bit of a learning curve, it’s one of those tools you wished you’d started using years ago.

Despite its steady popularity for organising and manipulating data, employees are often left to learn Excel and Power BI on their own. Because of this lack of training, many users only tap a fraction of the tools’ capabilities, having learned what they know through trial and error (sometimes a lot of error).

According to figures (https://www.acuitytraining.co.uk/news-tips/new-excel-facts-statistics-2022/), people need help with an Excel issue from colleagues twice per week, and 9% of these issues take longer than 30 minutes to fix.

Even more worrying, 12% of people have seen an Excel mistake cost their organisation in excess of £10,000. Not surprising when a simple formula mistake could seriously disrupt budgets and projections.

Coding

Coding is the process of designing and building executable programs to perform specific tasks. It also helps to communicate with the computer by passing the instructions and providing tasks using binary codes. Coding also allows you to create computer software and operating systems along with creating websites, applications, etc.

Coding covers a variety of “languages”, including: Python, Java, JavaScript, GO, Swift, R, and more.

Careers in data science and engineering, machine learning, web and app developing, cloud architecture are birthing new opportunities every ear, and require everything from basic coding skills to advanced specialised knowledge.

With these opportunities come attractive salaries and career progressions: Full Stack Developers can earn anything from £40k – £75k within the first three years of their career. Roles requiring even more specialised coding skills often offer up to £130k salaries. (https://codeinstitute.net/blog/software-developer-salaries-uk-europe/)

Clearly, coding is far more niche and specialised than the likes of Excel and Power BI and for the majority of workers, not something that needs worrying about. However, the impact of coding on businesses has never been greater.

Coding and programming are ruling the world by implementing innovative and creative tools. The modern era is much dependent on both coding and programming. The present world is dealing with a large number of applications. Every single application and software is coded using various programming languages. In a short period of time, coding and programming has helped solve complex problems without any risk.

Coding and programming skills also help in improving communication and collaboration skills. The applications and every implementation developed using coding are helpful in every sector.

There’s a plethora of free online tools to break into coding, and even school children receive exposure to and structured teaching in the field. But diving into such a complex and technical field alone is difficult, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

That’s why structured Government-led training is key. A hybrid model of classroom-based teaching and self-guided learning offers the best of both worlds – enough structure to make coding accessible for all, but enough freedom to allow further development is needed.

Project Management for All

There’s a trend towards more and more knowledge work being run in project fashion – processes, procedures and a focus on outcomes have taken centre stage, thanks in large to the more remote-working style we see ourselves in in 2023.

Where previously colleagues may have shouted across the office for an update on a project, 2023 sees the need for more organised meetings, which leads to meeting notes, which leads to follow ups, which leads to projects actually being treated as projects. As a result, more and more people doing project management as part of their day job.

There will always be complex and complicated projects that need a steady hand and a particular set of skills to bring to a successful delivery – it’s rare that who actually carry out the project’s work on the ground are also able to be responsible for all the metrics needed to track a successful project. As the business environment gets more and more global, digitalised, uncertain and fast, companies need to quickly adapt and bring services and products to market. Project managers are the people who can make that happen.

PMI says that by 2027 employers will need nearly 88 million people in project-related roles. (https://www.pmi.org/learning/careers/job-growth).

Project management isn’t simply being the person with the pressure on their shoulders to ensure a project is completed on time and within budget. Neither are they the person who makes all the decisions or bosses people about. Project Managers need to respond to stakeholders with competing demands on their time, complex and unknown technical situations, higher staff turnover (there’s no such thing as a job for life anymore), greater demands being put on management teams from HR and IT, collaborative contracting and partnering with suppliers, and increasingly complex regulation and governance.

The increase in project management software has sought to support this increased need; applications such as Asana, Otter, Monday, Basecamp. Trello and more all offer structured templates for how to begin, manage, and complete a project. But Project Managers also need skills that no app can truly deliver: empathy, strategic thinking, creativity, motivation, persuasion, customer service, listening, to name just a few.

This is where structured training in the basics and principles of project management are key. Every project (and Project Manager) is different, but mastering the basics means that you are able to break the rules when needed.

Investment in training = a thriving business

While structured training opportunities within businesses are far more common now than they used to be, there are still plenty of organisations that take an “as and when” approach to training. Formal training requires time, money, planning, and a business need. It also requires ownership – should this be led by line managers, HR, a dedicated L&D team?

There are plenty of reasons that training takes a back seat to the everyday needs of a business, but the reality is that employees are crying out for opportunities to further their knowledge and growth. Gone are the days of “free tea and coffee” or “table tennis table” being benefits. A quick look on job boards will see that, on top of post-covid perks like remote working and casual dress, time off work for training, and a learning and development allowance are high on the list.

The employers that gain and retain the strongest, most proactive employees are the ones who invest time and resources into formal training. Demonstratable training is beneficial to all concerned – an organisation can demonstrate investment in their staff and a forward-thinking approach to business development; and employees get to add new competencies to their skillset and CV.

On top of this, learning and development encourages employees to continually thrive to be the best they can be, and to grow as a person – qualities that every organisation should want in their workforce.

We know what you’re thinking – what about the cost? While it’s true that structured training requires an investment from organisations in terms of time and planning, the cost can be minimal, or even free.

Fully-funded training from The B2W Group

The B2W Group are working their partners as part of Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s three-year fully-funded Skills for Growth programme. Funded through the European Social Fund, Skills for Growth plugs the skills gaps in priority sectors across Greater Manchester and brings essential in-demand business skills to employees who are keen to grow their knowledge, competencies and experience.

The Digital Careers Upskill Programme offers employees and businesses in Greater Manchester access to fully-funded short digital and business skills courses.

During these focused bootcamp courses, you can expect fully Government-funded training, remote enrolment and induction from the comfort of your own home, online, 1-2-1, and group support, and a delivery plan designed around you. These courses are designed to support personal progression routes and ambitions, and can be used as a pathway into further learning, including Level 3 and Level 4 up-skill apprenticeships and distance learning opportunities.