1. ASSURED SKILLS Maeve Mckeag Department for Employment and Learning

2. ASSURED SKILLS people:skills:jobs

3. ASSURED SKILLS Assured Skills  Assured Skills aims to bring to bear the expertise of our Department to support companies investing in Northern Ireland  Employment Service  Higher Education  Further Education  Skills & Industry

4. ASSURED SKILLS Assured Skills  Assured Skills is a joint Department for Employment and Learning and Invest Northern Ireland programme  The key consideration is the creation of new jobs  Three groups we work with: Potential Inward Investment companies; Existing companies who are expanding; and “Enhancing Capability” strand to develop local workforce  Ultimate goal is to contribute to the economic performance of Northern Ireland

5. ASSURED SKILLS Assured Skills – Aims  Assured Skills aim to provide assurance to employers that the skills they need to support and grow their business are available in Northern Ireland  Add skills and training support to the assistance already available from Invest Northern Ireland, tipping the balance in favour of the creation of new jobs here  Provide a soft landing for new companies  Reduce risk in new labour market, and make new recruits as productive as possible quickly

6. ASSURED SKILLS Pre-employment Training  Advertising and Recruitment  Sifting and online psychometric assessment  Interviewing  Training designed in conjunction with the company

7. ASSURED SKILLS Pre-employment Training - Benefits  Bespoke training designed to company specification  Select the right candidate  Interview after training  Take only the trainees the company want  DEL pay training provider  Employees are more productive, more quickly

8. ASSURED SKILLS University/College Collaboration  Course Design and Delivery  Student placements  Lecturer placements  Curriculum change  Future partnerships

9. ASSURED SKILLS Collaboration - Benefits  Bespoke training  Early access to students/potential employees  Research and development  University/ College gains direct industry experience  Graduates better suit company needs

10. ASSURED SKILLS Enhancing Capability  Belfast Met – up-skilling lecturers in skills relevant to renewables sector, in particular wind turbines.  Investment Operations Certificate – creating a pool of graduates with skills of interest to financial services sector. Almost 300 unemployed graduates have undertaken the qualifications.  Software Testers’ Academy – training non-IT graduates to be software testers to meet established deficit.  Other “Academies” in Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, and CNC Machining have taken place/are in progress.  Plans for 2D and 3D Animation and Capital Markets academies being developed.

11. ASSURED SKILLS Projects to Date  Fifteen Foreign Direct Investment projects supporting the creation of 3,736 jobs  Total DEL commitment: £6million  Sectors: Financial Services, Information and Communications Technology, Legal Services

12. ASSURED SKILLS Assured Skills - Success Comments provided by our current Foreign Direct Investment companies.  “CME Group's growth depends on recruiting well educated, high calibre staff at all levels and ensuring that we develop our people to service the dynamic, diverse and challenging sector in which we operate. Assured Skills support was important in making our efforts to expand in Belfast a reality.” Mark Bennett, General Manager - Belfast office, CME Group  “We found significant benefit from the using the Assured Skills Inward Investment Programme to create an engaging, new training experience that supported our accelerated growth during year one of our establishment in Northern Ireland. As CVS Caremark is a pharmacy innovation company, we are delighted by the collaboration of our universities & colleges to devise this original training which we hope will be incorporated in to mainstream course content.” Mark Sheppard, Northern Ireland Site Director, CVS Caremark

13. ASSURED SKILLS Material Handler project  An example of an existing company wanting to expand  First meeting with Caterpillar, Invest NI and DEL assured Skills was in July 2013  DEL offer was based on average salary - £220  Joint board casework with DEL, INI October 2013  Skills Growth and Assured Skills worked with Caterpillar to develop the training plan  Links to colleges through Colleges NI

14. ASSURED SKILLS Training started March 2014  NRC in Monkstown delivering CNC machining, welding and fabrication  Belfast Met in Larne delivering hydraulics, plant fitting and contamination control  Upskilling college tutors  Capital expenditure

15. ASSURED SKILLS Further information from Maeve McKeag Department for Employment and Learning Maeve.mckeag@delni.gov.uk and +44 28 9090 5283 or www.delni.gov.uk/assuredskills