What a week for Skills & Talent in Southeast Wales, with Career Wales partnering Age at Work to shape an age-inclusive workplace …. eight CCR employers being honoured with the Gold status MoD Recognition Award … Persimmon Homes’ groundbreaking training academy securing the Bridgend College Employer Partnership Award … three inspirational trailblazers emerging from the Tramshed Tech Summer Startup Academy … and a revolution in training for medical professionals being perfected by CEMET and Goggleminds …
Careers Wales takes action on Age Inclusion in the Workplace
Careers Wales has joined 29 other organisations in proactively supporting its over-50 workforce – teaming up with Age at Work to nurture an age-inclusive, multigenerational workplace that proactively supports people aged over 50 who are looking to remain in or return to work.
Career Wales’ support is the latest recognition of this vital workforce population being championed by Age at Work – the pioneering partnership established between Business in the Community Cymru (BITC) and Age Cymru.
One in three Career Wales employees are 50+, so the ability to recruit, retain and retrain people of that age group is an essential for the organisation – with Age at Work partnering to help prevent early-exits, support later-life working and helping add value to the ‘employment deal’ for older workers.
The 50+ demographic is a highly valuable workforce for employers in all sectors – and Age at Work’s commitment to putting in place inclusive working practices is hugely welcoming in an era of deep skill shortages and an ageing UK population.
Through Age at Work, employers have access to a range of free toolkits, networks and support to help inform the action they need to take to create a workplace that’s inclusive for mature employees as well as their colleagues in other age groups.
Those actions can include shaping recruitment practices and training pathways that don’t alienate this age group, making reasonable adjustments to support older colleagues with caring responsibilities and health issues – and many other best practices designed to retain the knowledge and skills of this valuable cohort.
12 Welsh Employers honoured with prestigious Ministry of Defence Recognition Award
12 employers in Wales – including eight from the Cardiff Capital Region – are among 156 organisations who have been awarded the Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) Gold Award 2022 for their outstanding support shown towards skilling and employing people from the Armed Forces community.
The 12 Wales-based winners are:
● Admiral Group plc
● Cardiff County Council
● Denbighshire County Council
● Hugh James
● North Wales Fire & Rescue
● Pro Steel Engineering Ltd
● Rubicon Facilities Management
● Vale of Glamorgan Council
● Veterans Award CIC
● Woody’s Lodge
● Wrexham County Borough Council
In addition, Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council and Adferiad Recovery Ltd received their Gold Award revalidation, in recognition of their hard work and continued support over the last five years.
To win this prestigious MoD award, organisations must show that they provide 10 extra paid days leave for reservists and have supportive HR policies in place for veterans, reserves, Cadet Force adult volunteers and the spouses and partners of those serving in the Armed Forces.
The awards were launched in 2014 and continue to grow in strength each year, currently totalling 643 holders – with organisations reapplying every five years to retain their Gold Award status.
Leading Homebuilder wins Bridgend College’s ‘Employer Partnership Award’
Leading housebuilder Persimmon Homes has been named winner of the Bridgend College Employer Partnership Award for 2002, for establishing a groundbreaking education and training academy that is producing the next generation of construction workers in South Wales.
Working in partnership with the college, the ‘Persimmon Academy’ supports apprentices in developing their skills at a specially-designed construction and learning facility in Llanilid, Pontyclun – building on a successful five-year relationship that has created over 150 new job opportunities in construction throughout our region.
This year, the College has also designed a ‘management apprenticeship’ course that is bespoke to Persimmon – equipping the company’s team with specialist qualifications in construction and site management, creating the Persimmon leaders of the future and highlighting the significant investment being made by the company in both staff training and recruitment.
The partnership model is creating jobs for both apprentices starting their career and those looking to retrain and enter the construction sector – delivering a range of apprenticeship opportunities in a first-class learning environment, across an area of Wales that has suffered significant job losses from the steel and automotive industries.
Tramshed Tech’s Summer Startup Academy winners announced
QZee, Telephort and Ledger Box Limited have become the latest ‘ones-to-watch’ after securing a game changing support package from Tramshed Tech’s award-winning Startup Academy.
The latest 12-week programme has coached twenty exciting pre and early-stage tech start-ups across sixteen key skill areas of business – including idea generation, product market fit, marketing and sales, managing business growth and achieving investor readiness.
The programme culminated in a ‘Demo Day’ on 14th July at Tramshed Tech’s iconic building in Grangetown, Cardiff – where 13 tech startups pitched their business ideas to a room of investors, business support organisations, potential partners and mentors, in true Dragons Den style.
Each of the three ‘winners’ bring revolutionary thinking to solve diverse challenges: with QZee’s hospitality booking system addressing the ‘no-show’ problem that costs the UK hospitality a staggering £17.6 billion, Telephort developing a digital-first B2B freight service which utilises excess capacity from the current road freight network, and LedgerBox creating a secure and user-friendly online asset management portal.
CEMET and Goggleminds develop Virtual Reality ‘Mediverse’ to train medics
USW-based Centre of Excellence in Mobile and Emerging Technologies (CEMET) and medical training business Goggleminds are working in partnership to develop a pioneering virtual reality technology that will radically enhance the way medics are trained in the UK.
Building on the ‘Metaverse’ concept, Goggleminds recreates clinical environments and clinical scenarios to replicate ‘real-life’ – mirroring actual situations that medics are likely to be facing when undertaking their training, without the need to test their skills on real people.
This revolutionary co-production with tech experts at USW is on track to develop a cutting-edge system that prepares medics for operating on patients of all ages – with a particular focus on treating children – enabling trainee nurses, doctors and surgeons to test their skills and retain that knowledge without putting themselves or patients in danger.
The brainchild of Cardiff-based entrepreneur Azize Naji (who previously worked with the NHS as a health, safety and wellbeing practitioner), Goggleminds is already working with a number of NHS healthcare professionals and medical students in England and Wales to create a library of simulations: a perfect partner for CEMET, which helps eligible SMEs to access funded collaborative Research & Development – transforming innovative ideas into high-quality products.
Discover more about the innovations that are re-shaping Skills & Talent in our region and beyond – go to www.venturewales.org
