Inspire to Aspire

Businesses and the hard working people of this country has established this small island in the world.

In 2020 the year of the Covid pandemic, what was the Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership and is now Hertfordshire Futures fully integrated into the Hertfordshire County Council created Generation Skills events the first being held in Stevenage. On the opening occasion, due to Covid, our event was held online, but on all occasions since, the events are being held in person in our Local Authorities across the entire county.

In 2013, when I was appointed to Chair the Hertfordshire Skills and Employment Board, unemployment was much higher than it has been since and it was clear that Employers at the time were spoilt for choice in relation to hiring new Employees. Today however that situation is quite different.

In the past few weeks I have attended a number of Generation events and have seen the vast numbers of national and local branded employer’s presenting their respective organisations to circa 1000 Students and 250 Parents to provide inspiration to our young students in helping them define and aspire to a career path for themselves.

The country has a severe shortage of people with the technical skills required to maintain our country’s ageing infrastructure as demonstrated at Heathrow Airport recently with the Sub Station that caught fire.

Everyone is now committed to the development of AI for the future and this will bring greater public access to the knowledge provided by our professional services industry and in fact many of the companies in these industries are adopting AI to reduce costs and improve customer services which in turn will reduce the impact of some of our higher level qualifications. With that in mind our University and Colleges across the County are developing many courses in the areas of high demand which today represents the technical opportunities required by industry.

It was interesting to read some thoughts of Sir Ian Duncan Smith recently in the Telegraph newspaper where he expresses the need for greater career planning options in schools for our students for the Country to avoid increased benefit costs.

Having run a successful business for 45 years and been subjected to criticism for making money to pay ever increasing taxes, It’s time to recognise the value that our enterprises deliver to society and congratulate and promote them for the mental health benefits they deliver in providing our British people with a purpose in life.

I remember listening to a TV interview with the Chinese Ambassador to London a couple of years ago where the TV presenter was wanting to discuss the human rights of the Uyghur people of China and she responded with “well what about the human rights of the British people” and went on to infer that paying people to sit at home is not beneficial to their mental health and it appears her assessment is proving to be entirely correct.

I call upon all employers in our wonderful county of Hertfordshire to sign up for our Generation events starting in Stevenage on the 15th of May and take up one of our FREE stands by registering.

This is your opportunity to present your brand to your employees of tomorrow and to help develop the future of our wonderful democratic and free nation.

Looking forward to seeing you there.