To mark the 10-year anniversary of our UK Apprenticeship Programme, I’m proud to welcome our new intake of apprentices who started this week. This year’s apprentices are more demographically diverse than ever – with a greater geographical representation in the north, an increase in people from other industries after being furloughed and a growth in ethnic minority applicants.
We’re delighted that 93% of our apprentices stay at Cisco and become the new generation of industry experts and leaders, as they strive to build an inclusive future. Nearly half of our apprentices are female and from ethnic minority groups, and a significant number are neurodiverse; and it’s their empathy and lived experiences as members of marginalised communities that helps us to embed a conscious culture and inclusion within our organisation.
Greater inclusion is an important factor in helping to level up our society and achieve social justice, and as members of the Purpose Coalition, we are proud to be leading on ‘Goal 10: Closing the Digital Divide’ as part of the Levelling Up Goals framework. By facilitating equal access to technology and a digital education and skills programme – for everyone – we’ll help to economically empower people through greater employability.
This is where our Apprenticeship Programme comes into play, along with our Networking Academy, contribution to the Department for Education’s Skills Tool Kit, and our educational pathways programmes for students of all ages. Provisioning digital skills for everyone can truly change individual lives and the economy of our country.
The technology sector accounts for 7.7% of UK GVA, it employs 2.98 million people and there are 1.87 million people employed in technology roles across the economy. Today, 10% of jobs in the UK are technology roles and three million new technology jobs could be potentially created by 2025. The economic opportunity is immense, especially as these jobs are highly skilled and pay considerably more than the average UK salary.
But the biggest challenge is, we don’t have enough people with the skills to fill the technology job vacancies already on offer. The technology industry is only second to healthcare in having the highest number of job vacancies and there’s currently around 100,000 unfilled vacancies per month. Such a skills shortage is costing the economy £6.3bn in lost GDP a year.
We – Cisco, the industry, government, wider businesses and organisations – have a moral duty to work together to resolve the skills gap and level up society in rural and urban communities, across all regions of the UK and for marginalised groups. That’s why we have a learner-first approach with our apprentice programme; we partner with competitors, our ecosystem of partners and social enterprises, to ensure our apprentices gain the best skills and strengths they can, to support themselves and society – and not just Cisco.
Our Apprenticeship Programme not only contributes to the overall efforts of bridging the skills gap and levelling up in the UK, but its participants do a brilliant job of injecting new ideas and fresh perspectives into our organisation, giving a welcome boost to the skills of established colleagues. Personally, it energises me when I speak with our apprentices. Learning from them helps me to both establish what their needs are so I can facilitate a pathway for them and to understand how I have to adapt my own skill set, so I’m aligned to this new generation of emerging talent who will scope the future.
– The statistics can be found in the ‘techUK Fast Forward for Digital Jobs’ report, June 2021
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