DRIVING COMPETITIVENESS
Paul Healy, chief executive of Skillnets, outlines why it is so important to support SMEs in developing leadership and management skills
B uilding SME management capacity in Ireland will be a key factor in sustaining our economic growth and enhancing competiveness at both the firm level and at national level.
According to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, companies that engage in management development are more likely to survive those critical first five years.
The National Skills Strategy 2025 has also highlighted the economic benefits of management development, and this view was repeated again in the 2016 National Competitiveness Council report which concluded that “the availability of a large and talented cohort of managers is a key driver of enterprise productivity and competitiveness”.
Skillnets, the national agency responsible for funding and supporting training networks, is deeply involved in supporting the management development needs of SME owner-managers in Ireland.
We understand the training challenges faced by SMEs. Scale is often an issue because smaller organisations typically don’t have the human resource functions or training budgets required to identify skills needs and fund the appropriate responses.
SMEs also find it harder to release people for training due to operational demands and often owner-managers may not recognise the need for an objective skills analysis for their employees or indeed themselves.
This highlights the pivotal importance of supporting SME owner-managers to identify and address not only their business needs but their workforce development needs.
Training supports to SME owner-managers also create a powerful multiplier effect because leaders who undergo development are more likely to invest in the development of their own staff.
Scaling a business is another significant skills challenge highlighted at national policy level. Leaders in companies that are scaling may struggle due to a lack of ‘scale-up leadership talent’, i.e. access to the people who have previously scaled up companies to significant revenue and employee numbers.
Developing these skills involves taking the time to learn from the experiences of other companies and entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses successfully.
Skillnets’ ‘Management-Works’ programme was established under the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs in 2012 with a specific remit to enhance management capacity within SMEs.
Over 2,000 business owners and managers have participated in Management-Works programmes since its establishment. They have assisted SMEs to scale their business and harness the talent of their management teams. They have also helped them to enhance specific skills relating to business strategy and innovation, leadership and continuous improvement using lean principles.
We are currently undertaking a series of enhancements to our management development offering to ensure it remains well placed to assist Irish SME owner-managers with the many complex challenges that lie ahead. The revised offering will be launched in September 2017.
Skillnets will also make additional funding available in 2017 to our 63 training networks to they too can increase the level of management development supports to owner-managers in their networks.
So whether it is business strategy, sales, process improvement or scaling a business, Skillnets will continue to play a key role in the ongoing provision of management development that is straightforward for SME owner-managers in Ireland to access.
“Leaders who undergo development are more likely to invest in the development of their own staff”