Public and Commercial Services Union

Learning and skills are issues which often slip to the bottom of the negotiating agenda, but they have a significant impact on the quality of working life and on career prospects.

Learning new things can benefit everyone.

Employees benefit from new confidence and enthusiasm, and employers benefit from having a more motivated workforce better able to meet new challenges and often healthier.

What employers want from the skills agenda

The government is keen to increase the skills level of the workforce and of its own employees. Recent white papers testify to this.

The new sector skills council for government employees, Government Skills, is developing initiatives aimed at improving skills development in departments and agencies.

This includes:

Professional Skills for Government

Aimed initially at the senior civil service and Grade 7, it seeks to set standards and improve skills in leadership, key management skills and job-related professional expertise. The programme is now being widened out to all staff.

Action plan on skills for life

Following a PCS representation, Government Skills agreed a major new initiative -a civil-service wide action plan on literacy and numeracy.

This should put in place facilities for staff to identify any learning needs and find the right course to help them out. PCS will be fully involved in the development and delivery of this plan. PCS Union Learning Representatives will have a major role.

Sector Skills Agreement

This will help establish the nature and extent of skills gaps and engage employers in finding ways of meeting them.

Too much focus on senior staff

While there are many positive aspects to what the Government as an employer is trying to do on skills, PCS believes that to date it has been too focused on senior levels and that there are weaknesses and gaps both at a national level and when it comes to individual departments and agencies.

The national skills strategies tend to focus on business targets and competitiveness.

Within departments and agencies there is an overwhelming focus on the need to meet targets, meet legislative requirements, and increase flexibility, productivity and performance.

This often leads to employers focusing on skills for immediate business needs and the needs of the current job rather than on broader, more transferable skills.

These broader, transferable skills such as IT skills can benefit individuals because they help employability. They can also help the employer in the longer term because they equip staff for the future.

The PCS agenda on learning

Trade unions have been successful in raising learning and skills issues at work and many unions, including PCS have managed to negotiate improvements to learning provision for their members.

However unions do not at present have a statutory right to bargain on training at work.

The TUC has been pursuing this, calling for training to be listed as a collective bargaining issue in the statutory union recognition procedure.

Unions are also calling for the government to implement measures to enable trade unions to negotiate more collective arrangements such as learning agreements and learning committees.

PCS has a good record of supporting the development of skills among its members. We want our members to have access to broad, transferable skills that can help them not only with their current job, but with their future career development.

Union learning reps

The union has a network of around 1200 union learning representatives to help members with their learning, talking to them about their learning interests and needs and helping them find the right sorts of courses.

Learning representatives regularly run taster events and workshops, particularly on “Learning at Work Day” to show members the range of learning that is available and to encourage them to try new things.

Our learning representatives also work with their PCS branch to get the employer to provide support for learning – such as funding, time off or learning facilities in the workplace.

PCS has obtained support from the union learning funds in England, Scotland and Wales to develop this work.

PCS is providing support for its learning reps, project workers and negotiators in talking to employers about learning. We have a Model Learning Agreement, the wording of which was agreed with the Cabinet Office/Government Skills. This is a useful tool for opening negotiations on learning with employers.

The benefits of learning

Learning can provide all sorts of benefits to members, to the union, and to employers. Recent case studies conducted by unionlearn (the TUC) shows that when employers work positively with unions to promote learning the results can include:

• Reduced sickness and absenteeism
• Reduced error rates
• Reduced staff turnover
• Increased employee satisfaction
• Employees become more willing to learn new things and take up the employer’s training (a learning culture is created)
• Employees become more confident to apply for internal promotion
• Improved industrial relations

So, learning activity can improve life at work for many members. It can have benefits for health, make members feel happier at work, and encourage them to do more training at work.

It can also help members feel more confident to apply for promotion and can open up a wider range of career choices. This is particularly true where members can receive a recognised qualification.

Benefits for the employer as well

But as the Unionlearn case studies show, learning benefits the employer as well.

This is true of all sorts of learning – not just job-related training such as word-processing. Non-vocational courses in such subjects can also benefit the member and the employer.

As an example, PCS union learning representatives in the Tax Collection Office in Preston persuaded management to set up a learning centre/suite in the office.

Management acknowledged that this has helped the business by raising performance and reducing sick absence.

However for these benefits to become real, the employer must:

• Work with the unions and support the development of union learning representatives and
• Provide support (money, time and facilities) for wider learning that goes beyond immediate business need.

Equality through learning 

There is also an equality dimension to learning.

Access to learning increases life and job opportunities and can help overcome barriers to promotion at work.

As an example, PCS has helped women and black and ethnic minority members prepare for promotion to supervisory or management grades through its Women into Management and Achieve courses.

Again, while PCS members benefit from this, employers also benefit – they can promote existing staff who can bring a wealth of experience and understanding.

What we want employers to do

If our members are going to get the most from learning, and if employers are going to make the most of their staff, employers must:

1. Provide fair and equal access to learning opportunities for all staff

2. Provide and support learning opportunities that are of the highest quality

3. Support learning that is accredited and leads to qualifications

4. Provide and support learning opportunities which develop transferable skills that assist with personal career development

5. Help staff achieve a core set of skills which will help with their current job but will also equip them for work elsewhere: literacy, numeracy, communication, IT

6. Support for learning that goes wider than the needs of the job – including time, money and on-site facilities.

7. Provide a proper learning needs analysis for each member of staff that takes account not only of the organisation’s needs, but of the staff member’s needs as well

8. Put in place career development structures that are fair, open and transparent

9. Recognise operational management as a skill and a respectable career path in its own right and train managers in this

10. Encourage and support the development of a union learning rep structure and work closely with the union on learning and skills policies and issues.

11. Sign a learning agreement with the union based on the Model Learning Agreement.