"EU is the answer to our digital skills shortages" according to agency MD
“THE education system in the UK isn’t going fast enough to keep up digital developments,” said My Social Agency managing director Mark Mitchell.
Mr Mitchell was speaking after having flown out to EU Parliament in Brussels to discuss eskills for small businesses in light of the EU’s Digital Single Market policy.
He said that some of the main issues surrounding the growing digital sector was the lack of skills and education, and the sharing of those skills between European countries.
“The Digital Single Market Policy means we get more benefits from cross border trading,” he said. “Companies outsource business to us and vice versa, and it will allow us to easily employ people from other countries.
“In the UK we lack people in certain skilled industries. We have a PHP web developer shortage but awful lot of designers. In Poland for example, the opposite is true. Different countries have different abilities and skill levels and we should be able to tap into that.”
Mr Mitchell said this would benefit UK SMEs who don’t always have the resources to employ the people they need, and will make Europe more “digitally connected”.
Waving the flag for the North, Mr Mitchell said that Leeds and Manchester are the UKs biggest hubs for digital activity, and if we collaborated with our neighbours across the Channel this could continue.
His company, My Social Agency has a total of 11 staff. He founded it after having worked at the Yorkshire Post and subsequently travelling the world.
He knows firsthand the benefit of European trade, with a client based in Holland, and the problem is more deep-rooted than at first glance, he said. “The UK education system isn’t keeping up with eSkills. The UK curriculum needs to be more current and provide training. If I want to upskill staff, I have to pay companies to train them, and for small companies it’s hard to front those costs. We need more local, affordable and relevant training.”
He continued: “Apprenticeship schemes are a good idea but training less skilled staff would take up a lot of time. You need someone with spare time to get the most out of apprenticeship schemes.”
