Session overview

Building skills for tomorrow: learning & development  and the next 5 years

Professor Mike Campbell OBE, Director of Research and Policy, UK Commission for Employment and Skills

In the frantic rush of today’s world it’s all too easy to be caught up in the present – to get absorbed in tackling a particular training need, or get obsessed by the latest tool that is supposed to solve all our learning problems.

Professor Mike Campbell is responsible for advising government on the policies, strategies and targets required to reach the world class skills ambition and for assessing the UK’s progress towards it, and it is his job to take the longer and bigger view. He looks at how well the UK is developing its skills for the future, at the role that we – the country’s workplace L&D professionals – play in this and at the research showing where we are succeeding and where we are falling behind.

In this closing keynote Professor Campbell throws startling light on the importance of skills to both organisations and to the UK. He will draw on research demonstrating the impact of coherent, well thought-out skills building activities, and ask crucial questions about today’s L&D functions. What bundles of people management practices, together, create high-performing enterprises? What are the effects of improved skills on individuals and on organisations? And what can we do to increase our effectiveness in L&D and demonstrate its impact?

This call to arms will give you the ammunition you need after the conference to make the case for learning in your organisation.