The UK Commission produced a conference poster to highlight the wealth of information available from the UK Commission's Employer Skills Survey 2011. We wanted an eye-catching poster that would stand out from the crowd and help us communicate key findings clearly. We've reconfigured the poster for our blog and would welcome your feedback.
Are you a policy maker? Is presenting information in this way useful in finding out about and accessing data?
Are you a business? Does presenting information in this way help you to understand the skills environment?
Let us know what you think!
10 comments
Comment by Peter Chinnery posted on
Having used the Employer Survey in recent years, this provides an excellent way of presenting the material in a short & sweet way.
Would it be possible to provide some form of pictorial representation of training by region. Might provide a visual emphasis of the need to increase training in the regions.
Hope this is useful
Kind Regards
Peter
Comment by Leia Fee posted on
As a business I'm not sure it makes a strong argument for WHY businesses should train - "because the big outfits do" is a bit weak and the advantages given are a bit generic...
Pointing out the cost and time issues without suggestions for how to overcome them is more likely to make business decision makers just nod and agree and not do anything about it.
All that Health and Safety training and Induction training - to me personally that says a HUGE swathe of training is about covering ones rear end and not about skills at all! 😉
Interesting as a training provider though!
Comment by Stewart Segal posted on
useful way of providing information but presenting the stark facts with no analysis may lead people to make the wrong conclusions. large companies are always going to train more if the question is do you train people and many companies only consider off the job courses as training and do not think you mean learning. Facts without some analysis can point to obvious conclusions which may or may not be true.
Comment by Matt Bird posted on
Hi,
Thanks for all of your feedback, it is really appreciated as it helps inform our future work. This year we have been looking at different channels which we can engage with employers and the infographics (along with the animations on our youtube channel) are one channel. We are going to be producing content for different audiences in future and we will think about what kind of info/messages will resonate most with employers but all of your comments so far have been useful to take on board.
Peter- A colleague of mine is producing a whole series of maps which look at specific questions from the survey and maps the results by local authority and local enterprise partnership level. When these are available, we will put up a blog post so please keep checking back.
Leia and Stewart- Thanks for your comments. The purpose of the infographic (and our animations on our youtube channel) was to pull out key findings from the survey report and present them in an accessible format. However, you are right to point out the need for context and further analysis.
Thanks again all for taking the time to comment. We will feed this into our future work and specifically the thinking for our forthcoming work on the Employer Perspectives Survey which is to be published in December.
Kind regards,
Matt
Comment by Jenni posted on
Hi Matt,
I think your infographic gets across key results really well & is easy to translate.
Are you also producing infographics around your results for skills gaps / shortages / needs by sector / occupation?
Thanks,
Jenni
Comment by Matt Bird posted on
Hi Jenni,
Thanks for your feedback. I produced an animation on skills gaps and skills shortages on our UKCES youtube channel here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy90l-NtkgE&feature=relmfu
Let me know what you think. We are currently planning our future work showcasing our research findings through the blog so we may look at producing a similar infographic to look at this area in more detail.
Thanks,
Matt
Comment by Jenni Newberry posted on
Hi Matt,
Both the webisode animations on You Tube are excellent, a really interesting way to package the information - I have shared them via Twitter & will share via LinkedIn also.
I would be really interested in finding out further detailed information around skills shortages from your survey...could you point me in the right direction? Have you looked at producing any information in webisode animation or infographic by region / sub-region, providing a localised breakdown?
Thanks,
Jenni
Comment by Genna Kik posted on
Hi Jenni,
Thanks for your interest in the survey. We do have a lot more detailed information, results can be broken down by UK nation, region and LEA/LEP. The detail can be found in our reports, the England report can be found here for example: http://www.ukces.org.uk/publications/er46-employer-skills-survey-2011-england-results. Links to the UK survey results (comparing nations) can also be found on this page. We are also publishing separate reports for each UK nation with timeseries information, which have further sub-national geographies included. The Northern Ireland results were published today: http://www.ukces.org.uk/publications/er61-employer-skills-survey-11-NI
Kind regards,
Genna
Comment by Gethyn Williams posted on
Thanks for this - very interesting. I'd very much like to replicate in the voluntary youth sector and would be interested in helping to promote the next survey to our members. Do let me know if you're interested in collaborating at all.
Gethyn Williams
Director of Workforce Development
National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS)
Comment by Martin Owen posted on
The infographic works well to present the information. but it would be more effective if it also gave some information about the benefits of training. Big companies train more people than small companies is not exactly unexpected. The type of training and it's effect on performance would be far more useful. I worked for a large organisation which used e-learning. They would say they trained their staff, but most people just flicked through mandatory courses without actually leaning anything. Should that really count as training your staff?