This free skills event is for SMEs working in manufacturing, advanced manufacturing and textiles. It offers a free taste of the training available through The Skills Service, an industry update from one of our key partners and an opportunity to discuss your business training needs with a skills advisor who can help find the solution and funding.

8:30am - Coffee and funding

Coffee with The Skills Service - find out about funding for workforce training through the European Social Fund and how The Skills Service can help you access it and find the right courses over a coffee.

9am - Presentation

Textile Centre of Excellence - The textile industry -market trends, skills issues, challenges and opportunities, training offer, emerging occupations and the future. Speaker TBC

9:30am - Free workshop - Change Management

Changing the way we think about change​

An interactive session, which will use our experience of working with manufacturing businesses throughout the UK, to explore ways in the attitudes and mindsets of those who work in our businesses can be changed to meet the significant challenges of the future.

Suitable for anybody who manages or works with people.

Session takeaways:

• ​recognising that people have to change along markets, technology and infrastructure;
• what engagement really means on the ground;
• the importance of psychological safety;
• a three step process to change thinking and embed new ways of working;
• facing up to the elephant in the workplace that is impeding productivity and what can be done about it.

Training provider: ITS Group (a contracted provider of The Skills Service).

Speaker - Michael Astrop, Business Skills Lead for the ITS Group​

11am - Coffee and funding

Coffee with The Skills Service - catch us after the workshop.

Just drop in

If you do not want to attend the workshop or presentation, businesses can drop in between 8.30-11.30am to have a free skills planning session with a Skills Advisor over coffee (no booking required).

The Skills Service is managed by the West Yorkshire Consortium of Colleges and funded by the European Social Fund.