Dani Novick, managing director, Mercury Search and Selection
Probably the most important thing the NSA needs to deliver is simplicity. Time and again over the past couple of years we have had clients tell us they don’t know what training is available or how to access or fund it. It’s the main reason we worked with the BPIF to create www.skills4print.com. The bureaucracy, perceived and real, associated with pre-existing training schemes and funding has been a major obstacle to training take up. Print badly needs simple access to information and a clear and transparent process in place to access funding and implement training.

Bernard Rutter, national sector skills council coordinator, Unite
We want Proskills to get into the regions because, at the moment, they’re a national organisation and a lot of the people in the printing industry don’t understand which Sector Skills Council they should be in. One of Unite’s goals is that, once companies realise the importance of training through things like the Employer Learning Centres, they sign a learning agreement to set up a structure within the workplace that ensures employees are part of the process of training. This will ensure training isn’t done to people, it’s done with people.

Mark Snee, managing director, Technoprint
The NSA will need to come up with something better than just skills brokerage. With only one broker in each region covering all the Proskills industries, how do they expect to give detailed specific advice to printers that we don’t have already? If they come to see me, then at the present time they will either have to advise us to contact the BPIF, Leeds College or send people forty miles down the motorway to Polestar Sheffield’s publicly-funded training suite. I don’t understand how the project got to this stage: millions of pounds of public money committed, without a clear offer and no evidence that the printing industry wants it or will support it.

Darrin Stevens, group training director, Polestar
Simply, I would like to see good direction on the qualifications needed for today’s market. But it needs to encompass every aspect of business, it can’t be print specific. Everybody should be included: managers, customer service, every individual. I think it is an excellent opportunity to help an industry that is in need of training. It is such a unique industry, it encompasses everything from solicitors to lorry drivers to cleaners, and training should reflect that. And it needs to concentrate on what the industry needs now, not in six months time, not three years ago. It should be versatile.