“Ok, so, I have called this session: how do we grow the workforce we need,” said Adam Locker from National Highways. “Because I am tired of the public sector saying we have no money, we can’t pay enough, and we’ll never get the people we need.
“We are all here. So how do we find bright people, and encourage professionalism, and grow the workforce we need?”
Participants felt one place to start would be to look outside traditional sources of recruitment. One suggested that customer service departments are a great source of engaged people who want to solve problems, and who can be taught specific skills, like how to code.
A challenge to this is the DDAT – the Digital Data and Technology Professional Capability Framework – which sets out what competencies people should have to be recruited into certain roles. However, this only addresses some aspects of digital work. And the session argued that if it needs to be changed “we need to own it.”