Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 645. FE Soundbite is the weekly e-journal brought to you by FE News, giving you a snapshot of the latest news and views. We can have over 200+ pieces of content live on FE News per week, so this is my little snapshot of what I thought was interesting from this week in the World of FE, Skills and Employability.

It was another really busy week on FE News.

EPA 2022 was great

It was great to see a whole bunch of old friends… and make some new ones at the FAB EPA 2022 event on Thursday. Wow, what a venue, if you were not there, it was at the Warwick University business campus directly behind a lake and it was an amazing location. We streamed the awards and SkillsWorld radio show direct from the event. Congrats to all of the winners.

Talk about making you feel welcome, I know we work closely together... but the FAB team really made me feel adopted into the FAB family … and I don’t know if you have ever attended an event on your own before, but there really is a cool vibe at the FAB events... and I totally feel a part of the FAB family whenever I am with them... and I so appreciate this. I have been literally on my own at previous events before… and it is weird, so thank you so much to everyone who made me feel welcome and a part of their team. You know who you are and I salute you for just being kind.

The Great Reshuffle, company culture, emotional intelligence, and it's more important to be nice

This leads into a really interesting article from Chris Thomson about being Nice, trumps being clever! Well worth a read and it is important for us all to be reminded of this, as our learners, your colleagues and teams all are influenced by your behaviour, attitude and outlook.  It is all part of the wider package of leading amazing teams and developing amazing learners into amazing citizens, future leaders and all of that. It is often overlooked.

Following on from Chris, Nahla has written a brilliant article about company culture and emotional intelligence how to retain and recruit amazing people and lead an organisation full of purpose. Well, well worth a read: How can you stop being impacted by the great resignation?  

We will be publishing more articles like this… as I think it is key to highlight different ideas and solutions for leaders to help retain and grow teams… as we need epic professionals in place to then also help learners, businesses and communities to have the tools in place to train and develop teams.

Especially when we take into account the latest ONS figures that there are now more job vacancies than unemployed people… this is the first time ever.

ONS - cost of living and more job vacancies than unemployed people

Also for the first time that I can remember, the ONS also highlight details on the cost and standard of living. I think things like in work poverty and the cost of living being a barrier for continual professional development or reskilling and upskilling will become more and more of importance. Especially with Rishi exploring why businesses are not investing more in upskilling their work force… this is a double compound problem. So it will be interesting what can be done to address this massive, massive challenge.

There was a really interesting report out about Prison Education… if you haven’t checked this out yet, I would highly recommend checking it out. Sally Alexander also wrote a really interesting article: Time to unlock Prison Education.

EDSK released a report about NEETs this week as well.

We also have a shed load of cool exclusive articles for you this week… so I hope you can grab a coffee, some time to think and reflect and I hope you enjoy FE Soundbite this week.

Some interesting developments from FE News are going to be announced soon:

Ohhh… also, I have been working on an event idea for literally five years now. Now it is painful for our early adopters when I am extracting this from my head and sharing the vision and dreams… but  oh yes, it is happening.

Le’Nise was our first ever member of staff and she said we should do some events… this was back in 2003 and I said… erm, they have all been done already, I only want to do an event if it is unique,  impactful and is valuable… not just a money spinner, bums on seats event… well nearly 19 years later… we have a unique and impactful event packed full of purpose… I am so buzzing. The best things come to those who wait!

I will let you know more soon, but FE News have supported literally hundreds of events over nearly 19 years.. but this will be our first in person and hybrid event / movement / immersive experience… and I wanted to make it very different to a policy event (honestly, this is what Google is for… telling you stuff that has been said already)… so I wanted to do something different and it is happening, it is exciting, I am sooooo buzzing, but it isn’t quite ready to tell you more about it yet as we are getting the foundations in place, exploring venues to accommodate this (as you know me… we are going for it, this is going to be huge) and it will be all about developing something beyond the day and starting a movement.

I am so excited and I also feel so humbled that the select people I mentioned it to have all said, yes, do it and how can we support it. I can’t wait to tell you more and to get you involved, one thing I do need is a good event organiser to support the team!... but it is exciting. I’ll tell you more on this really soon.