Portsmouth Harbour Marine’s first networking meeting of 2021

Join Portsmouth Harbour Marine for its first networking meeting of 2021

The meeting will take place, via zoom, on 18 Feb 2021 at 1500. please REGISTRATION CLOSED.

PHM will be discussing the data from the skills survey (see below) and how it’ll move forward with the next part of its strategy.

The session will be chaired by Richard Powell, PHM chairman, and will begin by exploring the results of the survey and what these mean for local businesses – with the caveat of Covid-19 affecting practices. This will be followed by plans for developing the local workforce which include promotion of maritime careers in schools, and encouraging businesses to create work experience schemes and apprenticeship programmes.

Marine businesses in the Gosport, Fareham and Portsmouth areas are invited to attend the online session.

Skills survey data released

The results from the 2020 skills survey are live on the website. Thank you to all the companies who took part. The data has been released to the press.

Sixty-four marine trade companies completed the survey which set out to understand the employment needs of marine companies in the Portsmouth, Fareham and Gosport area. Informed by the data, Portsmouth Harbour Marine intends to build a strategy to bridge gaps between employers and education providers.

The survey found that while 61% of respondents feel their current workforce meets their future business needs, 75% of respondents are concerned about an ageing workforce. Businesses may be confident that they can fill the skills gap in the near future but are worried about the long term.

With the caveat that this survey took place prior to Covid-19, opportunities were seen to exist in the area for employees with skills relating to ‘new and used boat sales’ and ‘chandlery’. 100% of the businesses in those sectors agreed that they were lacking employees with soft skills for the future. Furthermore the three most common technical skills that businesses reported they needed to meet future business were, ‘composite skills’, ‘IT skills’ and ‘engineering skills’, clearly showing a direct path to encourage young adults towards.

Register for the online meeting where the results will be discussed and make sure you get all the details you need for February 18, 1500.