Yvonne Mason on how to bridge the energy sector skills gap
The original article can be viewed here: https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/25460348.yvonne-mason-bridge-energy-sector-skills-gap/
Greater cohesion between industry, education and government to address the skills gap has been tried for years, but we’ve never needed it so badly, says Yvonne Mason.
Connecting, communicating and giving back – the trinity of commitment that industry must make to close the glaring skills gap, according to Yvonne Mason OBE DL.
She’s been driving change for decades, bridge building between industry and young people, drawing on her life experience, knowledge and contacts.
“Industry must make itself visible and understood by young people, with businesses opening their doors, connecting with schools in their communities and communicating what they do, the job roles they have and where they fit in,” said Yvonne. “How can young people find their future if they can’t see or understand what is out there and all the regional and global opportunities industry offers?”
It is crucial that businesses invest in connecting with young people where they spend time – in education and their communities – to link them with careers on their doorstep, she believes.
“Joining the dots” to shape opportunities for young people is in Yvonne’s DNA. It won her recognition in Her Majesty the Queen’s 2020 New Year Honours List for her years of dedication to inspire and empower young people in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Yvonne runs global shipping services business SafeSTS(Image: SAFESTS)
BROADENING HORIZONS
Growing up in Gorleston, Norfolk, with “conservative ambitions” for her career, Yvonne understands the challenges of young people in the region.
Global travel with her first company heightened her desire for young people to experience different cultures. She set up The Mason Trust 17 years ago with a key focus on broadening the worlds of local young people. The trust has taken or sent around 1,000 young people from Norfolk and Suffolk to 50 countries, learning by doing, teaching children and engaging them in community, education, research, volunteering projects, sport and performing arts.
The effects have been transformative. Young people returned with more confidence, empathy, understanding of the needs of others and clearer ideas where their futures could lay, she said.
One of the first “lived experience” trips was to Nairobi, working with the Starahe Leadership School (co-funded by Shell and BP) and a group from Fleggburgh High School, Great Yarmouth Charter Academy and others across the county. The trips were supported by The Mason Trust and jack-up vessel company Seajacks, now Cadeler.
“Witnessing the slums and the depths of how people lived made them revalue their own lives and the difficulties other people face,” said Yvonne. “They came home with confidence and a different perspective. It gave them the opportunity to help people. One is now a lawyer, coming from a challenging family background, and others are now in professions across the county.
“These young people are encouraged to give back to other young people which, over time, will create a continuous circle of support.”
CLEAR CAREER PATHS
The Mason Trust inspired Yvonne and her fellow trustees to create ICANBEA (icanbea.org.uk), a platform for young people to explore and research future career options, jointly funded by the trust and Suffolk County Council.
“It shows them the way to plan the paths into careers and the many companies in our region that could offer them opportunity. More than 600 companies are now involved, and around 50,000 young people use the platform each year.
“All the companies support entry level roles, apprenticeships and training opportunities, and the site offers them the opportunity to profile their jobs, news and opportunities.”
Yvonne’s ambition is to develop this further, bringing on companies with a similar ethos from the supply chains that are forming behind our significant infrastructure projects.
The same ethos runs through SafeSTS, the global shipping services business she has run with her master mariner husband, Captain Bob Gilchrist, for the last 15 years in Diss. It supports The Mason Trust to provide programmes such as Step Forward, mentoring young people who are in danger of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training), often referred by their school or the DWP, as they apply for jobs and find their way in the world.
“We are with them for the knock backs when business does not respond to their applications, we support them to find new opportunities, prepare for that big interview and get on the employment ladder,” explained Yvonne. “There’s nearly always a young person here with us.”
SafeSTS works across Asia, South and North America, north Africa and the Middle East, using its marine and logistics experience to innovate safety products and services in the global ship-to-ship transfer industry. It works to improve safety and reduce the carbon footprint in shipping logistics, from voyage optimisation to capturing and re-liquifying the emissions arising from cargo operations.
“When our team goes in to schools, students are goggle-eyed to hear what we do here in their town. They had no idea we exist and that is the same for most companies in every town. We need to tell them.”
A founding member of the University Technical College Norfolk (UTCN), Yvonne is chair of its Industry Liaison Group, which launched in 2014 with just three employer partners and now comprises more than 70 businesses that collaborate to ensure students are informed, inspired, trained and prepared for work.
“To make change, industry needs to deliver the investment, time and resource needed,” Yvonne stressed. “We should inspire, we must prevent, and we must communicate to get young people on track and into work.
“We need greater cohesion and targeted investment; there is clear need to align the requirements of the national industrial strategy with the curriculum and training facilities provided by education and industry.
“With major infrastructure projects, national housebuilding requirements and an ever-increasing need to pay respect to the many professional trades we so desperately need, now is the time to act.”
Working more cohesively has been tried before, she said, but short term and inconsistent funding has its challenges, and many a good project has fallen by the wayside or is only funded for a small number of recipients.
“Sizewell C is doing it really well, explaining the different roles needed on every stage of the project, like working as a digger driver in its early-stage construction, to delivering the specialist engineering further down the line. The challenge is getting this message to the young people whose skills will be needed at every stage.
“We must aim to influence young people before they choose their options at 13. Getting into schools and explaining what logistics is and how geography, the mathematics of weights and measures and costing fits in, it contextualises what they are being taught in school and shows them a future path. Nobody is teaching this in schools, so industry must.
“Then young people will know that a company just down the road does this and is looking for knowledge in these subjects. We need to be explaining business terms – like what a supply chain is, where do the opportunities for them lay.”
Achieving fundamental change also demands different thinking across the board, Yvonne said.
“When companies have hundreds of applications for just one or two apprenticeships or vacancies, what happens to those hundreds of people who are not taken on?
“Why aren’t companies saying: ‘I am sorry you didn’t get the job, but have you considered working with our supply chain or others in the sector?’ and directing them to where other jobs could be?”
PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE
As High Sheriff of Suffolk last year, Yvonne witnessed the journey of young people from school into the criminal justice system when timely interventions or inspirations could have saved a good number from “going NEET or worse”.
Yvonne chose to focus on the care leavers in Suffolk, often unseen and more vulnerable to failure.
“While much good work is being done, so much more is needed. Meeting homeless teenagers on the streets of our towns was a difficult experience. We must intervene and help, joining the dots for them to build a future. Care leavers need support. They have great support in the care homes, and they need continued support to have wonderful jobs and careers when they have to face an independent life.
“It costs money, but when do you make that investment? When they are in jail or when they are at school or leaving care?
“The Government is investing in state-of-the-art workshops in prisons but not in schools. You should not have to go to prison to get these facilities and chances, you should be getting those in school.
“Prevention is always better and fundamentally cheaper than cure. We want to empower our young people to be self-sufficient, contributing to our economic growth, not costing the government or local authorities on every level.
“For under 16s, we need to inspire, for 16-18-year-olds, we are informing them about training and work, post 18 they need to get out and working.”
WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?
Yvonne described an example of how the disconnect could be addressed in Lowestoft. Young people excluded from mainstream school are “feral on the high street” close to the diverse supply chain for the offshore energy industry, with a wealth of opportunity they know nothing about.
“These young people don’t have a clue what these companies do because no one is telling them. We are missing a trick.
“A guided walk down two roads in Lowestoft would present apprenticeships, traineeships, entry level jobs and, most importantly, a future. The Step Forward programme could be an effective way of addressing this.”
While ICANBEA is a great bridge, massive gaps remain, she said.
“The Mason Trust has taken almost 1,000 young people off the streets and through mentoring, informed by knowledge of industry and supply chains, and put almost 60% into work or further education.
“We need industry and supply chain to pledge support and get involved. We need to make sure that education delivers what students are interested in, and what industry needs.”
A regional gap analysis is vital to show which FE courses are available and make it known to industry what is there and where, and working with industry to shape the courses, she said.
Yvonne points to an exemplar of industry and education working together in Scotland. A £2.3m investment in a new technology and innovation centre at UHI North, West and Hebrides’ Stornoway campus on the Isle of Lewis is supporting the “Just Transition” to net zero commitment and creating the skilled workforce needed by employers, developers and major investors in the renewable energy sector throughout Scotland.
“It can be done,” she said.
In the market town of Diss, the high school sends young people down to the SafeSTS offices.
“They have no sense of where their futures could lay and quite simply don’t know where to start. We teach them business behaviours, show them where the jobs are, even knocking on the doors of local employers to ask for a chance for them. It works – it is a team effort.”
Now a Suffolk Deputy Lord Lieutenant, Yvonne and The Mason Trust have also set up the Small Change Grant, a fund to help young people get into work, whether by paying for an interview suit, provisional driving licence to get to work, even safety boots for a recent applicant who had found an apprenticeship as a tree surgeon.
As CEO of a global company, a Deputy Lord Lieutenant, founder of a charitable trust and careers platform, chair of the UTCN Industry Liaison Group, and now a board member of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, the national body for university technical colleges, Yvonne will be benchmarking the best of the best nationally and bringing it home to the East of England.
Yvonne’s determination to work for a better future for every young person will never wane.