Employees are critical to every area of work - too few, too inexperienced or insufficiently skilled creates cost, delay and damage to public services and economic competitiveness. Yet the current labour market shortage is evident across our public, private and third sectors. Our ability to deliver critical public services is undermined by it. The need to grow and compete our way out of recession is threatened by it. The capacity of our third sector to provide essential safety nets in the midst of growing poverty and household financial breakdown is damaged by it. So how should organisations anticipate, plan and react in order to attract and retain staff, minimise employee turnover and upskill and innovate with their valuable and scarce staff resource?
The UK and Scottish labour markets are undergoing enforced change. Many factors are at play. Brexit has dramatically reduced available labour from the EU. Long-COVID after pandemic has had a shrinking effect on the labour market. An ageing population is inevitably retiring and shrinking the workforce. Damage to health services during and since COVID means that delayed treatment of physical and mental ill health is causing further shortages.
This is a labour market where fewer available staff are able to command higher wages, are more willing to switch employers and are incentivised to do so by dramatic inflation-driven cost of living rises. How can public, private and third sector employers react to and cope with this staffing challenge?
This conference will address this challenge in three parts. It will firstly review the shape and drivers of the labour market challenge. It will discuss how organisations can plan, prepare and partner in responding to the crisis faced. Finally, it will examine the practical action that can be taken to move from reactive to proactive by focussing on retaining and innovating with workforces.
Topics to be discussed
Who should attend
This conference will be relevant for anyone involved in workforce recruitment and planning, training, staff retention and engagement, HR management, skills development, temporary staff sourcing and management and all those concerned with labour market shortages and supply in Scotland. This includes organisations in public, private and third sectors. It is for those engaged in the task of forming organisational responses to labour market shortages and associated challenges as well as the policy makers, academics and industry bodies concerned with structural approaches to tackling the labour market hurdles being faced.
Head of Skills for Growth and Inward Investment
Skills Development Scotland
Financial Economist, Author and Blogger
Chief Behavioural Science Officer
KultraLab
Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy, Professor of Economics
Business School, University of Aberdeen
Director
Actus Consultants
Commercial Director
Commercial Services Group
Emeritus Professor of Management
Queen Margaret University
Marion Beattie
Head of Skills for Growth and Inward Investment
Skills Development Scotland
Marion has a wealth of business advisory experience, having previously worked in economic development, research and the private sector. Through these different roles she has built strong business knowledge and experience.
Marion leads a new team focused on offering businesses that want to invest, grow and thrive in Scotland a comprehensive and coordinated package of support utilising SDS, partners and wider Scottish skills products and services.
This includes leading on support for firms expanding operations in Scotland, working with SDI colleagues around the world to help businesses understand the skills opportunities available in Scotland, and helping employers identify the innovative and bespoke solutions they need to react to shifting market demands.
She also leads a dedicated team helping Scotland’s SMEs identify and address their skills needs through Skills for Growth, which offers fully-funded business consultancy for businesses with less than 250 staff.
She is also responsible for embedding delivery within the areas in the national agencies for joined up systems and examine opportunities to improve the business customer experience. This includes CRM / Dynamics and interagency projects.
Frances Coppola
Financial Economist, Author and Blogger
Frances spent 17 years working for banks, where much of her work was concerned with settlement, accounting and risk management systems. She left banking in 2002 to concentrate on her singing career, but after the financial crisis returned to write about the banks that had so nearly blown up the world. She now writes on finance and economics for a wide range of media and industry publications including the Financial Times, American Express, the Independent, Open Democracy, CapX and CoinDesk. Frances is also a commentator for the BBC and Jazz FM, and is in demand as a speaker at economics and finance conferences. Her blog Coppola Comment is widely read in the finance & economics community.
Frances’s book “The Case for People’s QE” was published by Polity Books in June 2019. It was Bloomberg’s Book of the Month in September 2019 and was listed on Martin Wolf’s summer reading list at the Financial Times. The Korean edition was released in February 2020.
In addition to her writing and speaking commitments, Frances continues to sing and teach professionally, pandemics permitting. She is an Associate of the Royal College of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Amy King
Chief Behavioural Science Officer
KultraLab
Amy is the Chief Behavioural Science Officer at KultraLab, a digital coaching platform fusing behavioural science and technology. She is an award-winning Business Psychologist, Co-Founder and thought leader with a 12 year track record consulting and advising FTSE250 companies. In 2021, she was recognised by Management Today in their prestigious 35 under 35 most inspiring female leaders awards. Her ethos is to create positive change to the way in which organisations work, bringing together her experience and passion for psychology, people & technology. Much of her work has focused on helping people realise their potential. In 2018, Amy co-founded People Matter with a mission to eradicate workplace burnout and to create more caring, sustainable working cultures. People Matter were recognised as a top UK Rising Star by Tech Nation for intelligent mental wellness tech & solutions and won the CIPD's 2021 Best Use of People Analytics Award for their innovative work with data. In 2022, People Matter was acquired by Sabio Group. Prior to People Matter, Amy was Head of Consulting & Customer Success at The Chemistry Group, leading the global implementation of Talent Solutions.
Catia Montagna (Professor)
Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy, Professor of Economics
Business School, University of Aberdeen
Catia Montagna is Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
She joined the University of Aberdeen in 2013 and she previously held appointments at the University of Glasgow, and at the University of Dundee where she held a Personal Chair in Economics. A major strand of her research lies at the interface between international and labour economics and focuses on the relationship between economic globalisation, welfare state and industrial policies ,and labour markets; more recently she has also worked on the relationship between health and labour markets.
Laura Van Zyl
Director
Actus Consultants
Laura is Director of Actus Consultants.
Laura previously led Nuwe Consulting as its Managing Director. The purpose of Nuwe is to support the public sector in reducing reliance on outsourced solutions, becoming agile organisations and ultimately releasing cost efficiencies that help to ensure a higher quality of front-line service delivery in all services and for all communities.
Laura is a leader and innovator in the recruitment field with a wealth of experience during her 30 year career in the public and private sectors. This has spanned the NHS, utilities and transport and in both small and large businesses, but with a specific focus on recruitment in the public sector for the last 15 years.
Her early career was spent in generalist recruitment, managing branch operations and business development for market leading companies. She has extensive experience in Neutral Vend, Managed Services and Staff Bank/Talent Pool provision. She has implemented and managed innovative, cost-efficient workforce solutions from start-up through to operational delivery. This includes leading through the initial dialogue process, relationship development in the MV/ MSP and in Staff Bank/Talent Pool workforce solutions arena.
Laura was educated in Scotland and lives in Fife with her family where she supports community and rural projects. During lockdown she returned to her running and cycling roots, finding a passion for Duathlon and with the aim of representing Scotland at the Duathlon AG World Championships in 2024!
Steve Wilson
Commercial Director
Commercial Services Group
Steve is the Commercial Director as Commercial Services Group (CSG). Wholly owned by Kent County Council, CSG is one of the largest local authority trading companies in the UK.
Steve is passionate about delivering savings and enhanced delivery models for Local Government, through several operating models, such as insourcing, public-to-public joint venture partnerships and development programmes.
Prior to joining CSG, Steve spent 20 years working for global staffing and development organisations.
Richard Kerley
Emeritus Professor of Management
Queen Margaret University
Professor Richard Kerley is Professor of Management at QMU with a specific interest in public service management. He was previously at the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Local Authorities Management Centre, University of Strathclyde . He has also been a visiting scholar at Yale University. Before entering academic life, Richard worked in advertising, hospitality and in prison education. He also worked for four different councils, in adult education and then latterly in staff and management development.
He is currently also a Non-Executive Director with Mainstreet Consulting and a Trustee of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy 2021. He has been on the board of various companies, charities, and arts organisations.
Richard is the author of various books, research papers, academic journals, and numerous articles in the quality print media. His most recent publications include an edited book on International Local Government, and he is currently working on a taxonomy of international local government.
Richard chaired the Working Party on Renewing Local Democracy; the report of which was published in July 2000, and which was legislated for in June 2004 as the Local Governance Act. He has carried out research projects supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Scottish Consumer Council, Alcohol Scotland, The Accounts Commission Scotland, Tayside, Edinburgh and Fife Councils, the Association of MBAs, and the Scottish Government. He has been engaged in consultancy projects by government; local governments; government agencies; voluntary organisations and international education providers.
Sponsor: KultraLab
KultraLab is a behavioural science and technology organisation.
We are on a mission to unlock everyone’s potential through the power of coaching.
We believe that we are past the point of no return – we need to think differently about the world of work. Fusing together coaching, behavioural science and technology we can create exceptional organisations by enabling all employees to connect deeply with a business, learn new skills at scale and speed and improve their performance beyond recognition.
That’s why we created our CoachTech Platform, Kultra®, to provide organisations with a highly scalable and cost-effective solution to give everyone access to their own coach. The benefit? Your people feel more empowered, more engaged and more connected to the business, accelerating positive change and business growth.
Our partners
At KultraLab, we believe the future of business is through collaboration. We intentionally partner with organisations that can add value to our mission of helping our clients build the consumer workforces of tomorrow:
KultraLab Partner: Kelvin Capital
The Kelvin Capital team has a combined 30 years experience of working with new businesses and understands both the challenges and opportunities, which will be encountered during the high growth phase. The team has built up extensive networks, which will be made available to assist and support the portfolio businesses.
Kelvin Capital will actively promote the portfolio businesses through its website and social media activities raising their awareness and profile.
The entire Kelvin Capital team is focused on the success of our portfolio of businesses.
Sponsor: Commercial Services Group
Commercial Services Group (CSG) is one of the largest, local authority owned, trading organisations of its kind in the UK.
Since its inception over 90 years ago as the supplies division of Kent County Council, it has grown organically to become one of the leading suppliers of products and services to the education and public sector, serving over 15,000 customers in 85+ countries.
CSG is the umbrella for all its trading brands, it provides the support, dependability, and security to allow all brands to thrive independently. CSG are committed to providing an excellent customer and user experience underpinned by social value and a committed and empowered workforce.
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