Five key takeaways from the Parliamentary Skills Summit

The latest Parliamentary Skills Summit took place on Monday 27th November at the Houses of Parliament, where a panel of industry leaders discussed the role digital skills can play in the UK’s digital economy. Among them was Michael Thornton, director ofInvestigo public sector. Here are the key takeaways from the discussion.

Age is no barrier

When hiring for tech roles, organisations often seem to favour digital natives over older professionals. This could be due to a perception that younger people are more tech savvy, learn more quickly or, as Michael suggested, cheaper to hire: “Companies either want everything and have to pay for it, or want everything and haven’t got the budget to pay for it,” he said.

Whatever the reason, the result is that a whole pool of talented professionals – who have developed a blend of skills and emotional intelligence that’s crucial when building a team – is being disregarded. People over 50 can be just as hungry, just as keen and just as fast as their younger counterparts, plus they have honed years of soft skills.

There needs to be an attitude shift from employers and a recognition that learning happens through life, not just before a person enters the world of work. We need to find different ways for people to gain digital skills, facilitating social mobility through applied learning and reskilling – particularly for those who completed their formal education before AI skills became so important.

​

Learning never stops

We can only meet the constant change in the tech world with a culture of continuous learning. It’s about adopting an enterprising mindset and a willingness to keep on adapting, rather than focusing on a knowledge-based curriculum that can never hope to keep up.

​

Who’s responsible for upskilling? In a word – everyone. The school system provides a fundamental level of education. It’s then down to the individual having the willingness to learn and keep their knowledge up to date, and the employer providing the right support – whether it’s time off to complete a course or covering training costs. On top of that, we need to allow people the space to take a risk and change course. It’s that mindset of positivity and flexibility that will allow us to meet the challenge of an everchanging tech landscape.

​

Current university students, who are part of our future workforce, need to keep calm and take each day as it comes. You won’t get to the top of the mountain straight away. Many young people are putting themselves under enormous pressure to achieve their dream career in their 20s, when the early years are hugely formative and should be approached with a determined, but open mind.

​

​

Understanding underrepresented groups can help eliminate bias

AI will always have bias as it’s created by humans. That’s why we need to move away from the tech and think about the purpose of the product. What are we trying to achieve by using this technology?

​

Government, employers and educational institutions need to communicate with underrepresented communities on an ongoing basis to understand their challenges and properly cater for the subtle differences between groups – not impose solutions upon them.

​

Many women, for example, have had to drop out of the tech industry due to the costs of childcare; and with the speed at which the industry moves, that makes it very hard to get back in. The government’s extension of childcare allowances will certainly help, but we need to go further.

​

Clearly, the people in the best place to create the tech for a particular demographic will be the people in that group themselves. By getting underrepresented people into the seats where they’re designing the technology, we’ll avoid churning out the same systems with the same biases.

​

​

We don’t need to use AI for everything

With the clamour to understand AI’s capabilities and adopt it quickly to avoid being cut adrift, it’s easy to forget that we don’t need it for absolutely every aspect of our operations. “There’s a big race to understand what we need AI for,” said Michael. “Companies are asking, ‘how do we apply this? We don’t want to be left behind.’ But organisations can spend a lot of money and get it wrong.” For example, many organisations mass-distribute automated recruitment emails, adverts and LinkedIn messages produced by ChatGPT. But the recipients will often spot that these are automatically generated and as a result, find them disingenuous.

​

AI should be utilised to carry out time-consuming manual tasks, with the right sort of governance. That frees people up to perform creative tasks and develop genuine human relationships that lead to effective collaboration and productivity.

​

It’s only by learning about AI tools, so they can understand which tools will help them and which won’t, that organisations can achieve the right combination of digital tools and human creativity.

​

It’s not all about the grades

The UK’s educational curriculum is very knowledge driven, but should it be all about the grades? Maybe we need to move beyond a rigid, subject-based curriculum that revolves around assessments, and adopt an approach that encourages a love of learning. This should include teaching valuable life skills that a person can utilise throughout their career, such as communication skills and how to set up a business.

​

At the same time, we need to invest in continually developing our educators, right from teachers’ training. Teachers need to be empowered to utilise applied learning so they can bring learning to life.

​

There was a consensus that the best way of learning is by doing. You can have the best whitepaper in the world but it’ll be completely useless if that’s not the way a person absorbs information. To stop groups being left behind, learning needs to be community-based, accessible and with relevant role models from that community who speak powerfully and authentically.

​

Many thanks to the panel for a thoroughly engaging discussion and to the Parliament Street think tank and Centropy PR for hosting. If you’re a public sector organisation looking to hire the right talent or you’re a professional looking for a role in the public sector, please contact Michael Thornton directly or get in touch with our public sector team.

​​