FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
With the number of universities offering postgraduate degree level qualifications having shrunk over the last decade, what more can the sector do to support and encourage the next generation of FM leaders? What opportunities are available for FMs to increase their learning and gain meaningful qualifications?
THE L&D EXPERT’S VIEW
DAVID SHARP,
CEO, INTERNATIONAL WORKPLACE
The qualifications landscape in the UK has experienced rapid and disruptive change. The previous government announced plans to scrap more than 200 vocational qualifications for 16–19-year-olds – is now under review. Universities are struggling to survive in the post-pandemic financial landscape, with undergraduate tuition fees all-but frozen since 2012. Teaching staff are being cut. Postgraduate course tuition fees (not capped by government) are going up to compensate, with preference given to higher paying international students.
It’s a good time to ask: what are the alternatives to a formal post-19 education? I was reminded of the importance of soft skills to facilities managers when interviewing finalists for this year’s Pattenmakers’ Future FM Leader Award.
It’s not that technical skills are unimportant. There was a feeling that they could be gained on the job, or through studying recognised industry qualifications such as those accredited by IOSH, NEBOSH or IWFM. The time and cost involved in these is significantly lower than an MSc, and the knowledge gained likely to be more widely applicable to someone relatively early in their career in facilities management.
When it comes to softer skills though, what people seem to value above training is knowledge gained from experience. I hear this a lot. It echoes the shift in approach adopted by governments throughout the world to invest in lifelong learning. The challenge is: how can knowledge or competency gained from experience have the same level of recognition as that of a formal qualification?
One approach is the use of so-called micro-credentials, which allow granular learning outcomes from an individual’s study or experience to be documented in a way that allows someone to gain a formal credit for everything they’ve learned. Like a living curriculum vitae, micro-learning credits can be conferred to populate a learning record for life.
Imagine you’ve spent half a day at a mentoring programme, or half an hour reading an article. By documenting your knowledge gained against credentialled micro-learning outcomes, you’ll gain credit for competency or knowledge that is likely previously to have gone undocumented.
This new way of promoting and recognising learning will be extremely valuable for anyone working in FM – and for their employers too. It’s being adopted in the UK, EU, and further afield.
The UK’s 2021 white paper, ‘Skills for Jobs’, promotes this approach: “To enable greater flexibility, we must ensure that high-quality provision is normally credit-bearing, thereby enabling learners to accumulate and transfer credit where appropriate between institutions and to build up to meaningful qualifications over time fitting in with their personal and work circumstances.”
The EU has set a target of 60 per cent of adults participating in training every year by 2030 and has approved measures to help make micro-credentials work across institutions, businesses, sectors and borders within the European Education Area.
The US federal government has also supported initiatives aimed at expanding access to short-term, industry-recognised credentials, for example through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).
At International Workplace, we’ve been developing a system of micro-learning credentials since 2018, which form the heart of the new International Workplace Academy. It promises a new way for employers to upskill workers in health, safety and wellbeing; give them credit for the knowledge they’ve gained; and demonstrate corporate compliance. It shows that, properly implemented, micro-credentials can provide a cost-effective alternative to formal qualifications for workers and employers, and at a fraction of the cost.
