Energy & Utility Skills Group has responded to Skills England’s Skills for Work programme, calling for a simpler, more agile and employer-led approach to occupational standards that keeps pace with the changing needs of industry.
Occupational standards define the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for skilled occupations. Our response states that standards must remain employer led and focused on occupational competence, while becoming simpler and more responsive to changing technology and workforce needs.
For our industry, getting this right is particularly important. Efforts to simplify or accelerate the skills system must not dilute safety, quality or competence, particularly in technical and safety-critical occupations.
Phillip Bryant, Skills & Standards Manager at Energy & Utility Skills, said:
“Occupational standards need to start with what employers actually need from their workforce. For our sector, that means protecting safety and competence while making the system simpler, more responsive and easier to navigate across the UK. As technology changes the way we work, we also need to be able to update standards more quickly, so employers have the skills and workforce they need for the future.”
Supporting our Skills Strategy
The response supports the direction of our Skills Strategy and its focus on creating the workforce our industry needs now and in the future.
Central to this is our ambition for a safe, skilled, sustainable and productive workforce. These themes were deliberately built into our approach to the consultation, alongside the changing nature of work through new technologies and the need to simplify the skills landscape across the UK.
They also bring together the practical delivery of our Skills Strategy with our policy engagement: using the evidence and expertise of employers to help shape a system that responds to the real workforce challenges facing energy and utilities.
Occupational standards are the foundation of delivering that ambition. Strong, employer-led standards provide a common understanding of competence, while helping apprenticeships, qualifications, workforce development and training remain connected to the realities of work.
A clearer, more responsive system
Our response identifies several areas where change could make a real difference for employers.
- Employer leadership must remain central. Sector bodies and employer networks can play a stronger role in maintaining and updating standards, using workforce intelligence to respond more quickly to technological and labour market change.
- We need greater consistency across the UK. Better alignment between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would support workforce mobility, simplify the system and reduce unnecessary duplication. Local flexibility should focus on delivery and workforce planning rather than creating different definitions of competence.
- There must be multiple routes to competence. Apprenticeships have an important role, but employers also need technical qualifications, modular learning and transition pathways rather than reliance on a single training route.
- And the system needs to respond more quickly to change. New technologies are altering how work is carried out and the skills people need. Occupational standards, supported by workforce intelligence and employer insight, need to be able to evolve alongside them.
That is the opportunity presented by Skills for Work: not simply to make occupational standards easier to navigate, but to ensure they support employers in building the safe, skilled, sustainable and productive workforce our industries need.
The feedback and wider engagement are intended to inform Skills England’s recommendations on the future occupational standards system. For more information on our work on occupational standards, contact us at collaborate@euskills.co.uk.
