Build the skills you need into your business

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The Skills Builder Universal Framework provides a complete approach for building essential skills across your business.

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We provide employers with tools, training, resources and deep expertise to support skills development across their outreach, recruitment and staff learning and development.

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What is the importance of essential skills in the workplace?

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There are real benefits to individuals and organisations to building the essential skills. 

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Attract and retain top talent

• 56% of UK workers would consider moving jobs for better skills-building opportunities (Skills Builder and YouGov 2023).
• Employees with higher levels of essential skills go further in their careers, earning up to £10,200 more than those with lower levels of essential skills. 
• By adopting the Skills Builder approach, you can attract and retain candidates with the greatest potential.

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Open up a wider candidate pool

• Presenting employment opportunities using the language of the Skills Builder Framework helps to attract a more diverse pool of candidates with the skills you need, reducing bias and barriers to entry.
• Removing jargon can facilitate lateral movement and career progression in larger organisations and promotes social mobility beyond junior roles.
• By implementing our transparent and objective approach, you can be confident that you’re hiring the best person for the job.

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Upskilling and reskilling your team

• Since essential skills are needed in almost every job, in any sector, and at any level of seniority, it’s important that your employees build the valuable and transferable skills that enable them to succeed in their careers. In fact, 92% of workers would like more opportunities to build these skills (Skills Builder and YouGov 2023). 
• As people’s roles evolve, their skill sets will need to adapt. Consistent use of the Framework and regularly revisiting steps supports individuals throughout their professional lives.
• Our train-the-trainer model provides a sustainable approach, with 89% employees engaged with the Skills Builder approach noting better job performance and a further 75% feeling more engaged with their work.

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Speak the language of schools and colleges

• 85% of secondary and Further Education institutions in England have adopted the Skills Builder Framework as the language of employability. 
• By using this shared language, you can effectively connect with young people and ensure they relate to your organisation. 
• Engage the younger generation through outreach programmes that help them understand how their skills translate into your roles, organisation and culture.

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What are some of the ways I could use the Skills Builder approach in my business?

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The Skills Builder Universal Framework provides a common language for building essential skills at all stages of life. It is being used by leading employers from a wide range of industries - from hospitals, to recruitment firms, to international banks - to create clarity and consistency within outreach, recruitment and staff development initiatives. 

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There are countless ways you could use the Framework to support employee learning and development, recruitment or outreach, and we’ll encourage and support you to have best practice recognised through Skills Builder Impact Levels and our Employer Excellence Mark. 

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Here are some ideas for businesses:

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• Focus on the employee development for your early career talent, including apprentices and graduates, and this could include those seeking employment, through things like skills bootcamps or specific workshops, or you could use the approach to support those who are, or are at risk of becoming, NEET or economically inactive.
• Work with us on your corporate outreach to create meaningful, engaging and impactful outreach experiences. You could tailor your existing programme materials to include essential skill development, or we could create new content to better prepare young people for the world of work. 
• On a membership, you could focus on employee volunteering with us. This could help your businesses to build a culture of volunteering in the organisation through our Career Insights Weeks, when we virtually connect young people building their essential skills with individuals in the workplace, or develop your own tailored approach. 

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Can I use Skills Builder to support just one programme or department?

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The way our membership works is that businesses can tailor how they want to use the Framework, from supporting an individual programme or to create a consistent approach across an organisation. Sometimes it’s useful to identify a particular programme or department to start using the Framework with and build from there. Before you get started with us, we will work with you to identify a particular starting point or and help you to map out the key areas where the approach will add value and meet your ambitions and priorities. 

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How much does Skills Builder cost for businesses?

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You can start using the Skills Builder Framework to enhance your activities for free by accessing our online tools and resources. But the easiest way to create a strategy for embedding skills development across your organisation is to join our paid programme. This gives you structured support sessions to guide you in creating and implementing the approach. Membership prices are from £2,815 a year.

Download our prospectus.

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How does the Skills Builder Framework support individuals at all levels of seniority within the business?

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The way the Framework was created, was to make sure that everyone, at all stages of their personal and professional career journey can build skills. The language and progression of steps allow employees to reflect on what good looks like in the context of their role and decide how they can best move forward with their skills development as a result. When we look at how it’s used for employee development - we’ve run leadership workshops with senior leadership teams, supported apprentices and other early career initiatives to develop and articulate their essential skills, and we’ve trained line managers to effectively support their teams’ development, while building their own skills. 

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What size of business is best for embedding the Framework?

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The Skills Builder approach works well for organisations of all sizes and can be adapted to suit your context. We work with all sorts of employers, from SMEs to large corporates in a wide range of sectors. You can see who we’re working with on our webpage for employers and find out more about the possibilities for your organisation, as well as costs in our employer prospectus.

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Can the Skills Builder team help me develop my programme or create tools and resources?

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Lots of our work with businesses is like this. You can have a programme with skills training and development support specific to your project, where we’ll provide tailored training, advisory support and work with you to design and create your programme tools and resources. This is perfect if your team is short on capacity but would love to implement best practice in key areas.

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What if we already have our own competency, values or behaviour framework?

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We know that many organisations already have their own frameworks and practices in place and we know that one-size doesn’t always fit everyone. The Skills Builder Framework can be used on its own, or mapped to existing frameworks to help you to identify gaps in your current provision, ensure clarity around your existing competencies and set out clear next steps for progression.

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How does Skills Builder support social impact and can I measure it?

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The greatest benefit of the Skills Builder Framework is that it provides a clear, age-neutral language and approach to describing and measuring the 8 essential skills. Using the Framework to create clarity and consistency within your programmes can break down many barriers to entry for those from marginalised groups, enabling them to better understand your organisation, what you’re looking for in a team and how they can progress within your organisation. Over 85% of secondary schools and colleges in the UK have a touch point with the Skills Builder Partnership – by mirroring this within your programmes, you are ensuring that your organisation is accessible for young people and speaks the same language they have been supported to use in education.

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Alongside joining us on a membership, we have options for you to get involved with volunteering, and in our social value projects including working with schools and colleges, supporting non-profit community organisations and creating system-wide change through advocacy.

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What are the Excellence Standards and how do I achieve them?

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The Skills Builder Excellence Standards provide a powerful roadmap for businesses and organisations looking to develop a skilled workforce. They set clear guidelines for best practices across an entire business or team. Split across three key areas – outreach, recruitment and staff development – the nine Excellence Standards offer a structured approach to building a strong talent pipeline, attracting top candidates and fostering continuous learning. Excellence Marks accredit and recognise those standards, showcasing this commitment to skill development. These Marks are awarded at four levels: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Find out more from organisations that have achieved excellence:

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• Opencast earns Skills Builder Bronze Excellence Mark
• Amey achieves Gold Skills Builder Excellence Mark 
• Envision achieves Platinum Excellence Mark for recruitment, staff development and outreach

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What tools and resources could I include in my programmes?

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Skills Builder Benchmark 

A popular tool for our employer partners is Skills Builder Benchmark – an online assessment tool that supports everyone to understand their essential skills strengths and development areas. The tool explicitly guides employees’ unique strengths and areas for development, enabling them to set tailored goals and excel in their role and beyond.

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With organisation admin licences, you can see skills data for individuals, within teams and departments, as well as across the whole organisation. Managers can view skills data using the admin dashboard, to help inform targeted mentorship and coaching to their team. This allows you to design a training plan that is pertinent to your employees. You can also use it to assess the impact of your outreach programmes and measure learners’ progress. 

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