Developing your work skills can help you get a better job, earn more or change career. If you’re looking to enhance your skills to move forward, then there are two schemes that could help.

Adult Skills for Work (ASW) offers a wide variety of accredited training courses for residents of Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley and Sandwell. These are aimed at people who are already in employment, but who want to improve their skills in order to progress. 

On signing up, an expert skills advisor will talk to you about your career goals and develop a training programme specific to your needs. All the courses are either fully funded or part funded by the West Midlands Combined Authority, and delivered by Serco through a network of local training providers.

For more information, and to register your interest, visit the ASW website.

Serco also manages another development programme in the region – Skills Support for the Workforce (SSW). This is fully funded training to help businesses progress, which focuses on SMEs with fewer than 250 employees in the Black Country LEP area. 

The programme begins with a training needs analysis for your business, which will identify what skills development in your organisation will help it achieve its ambitions. The programme will then deliver flexible training to meet those needs. This could include full qualifications, individual units, on-the-job vocational training, distance learning and accredited qualifications – whatever works best to enhance your employees’ skills and potential.

The aim of SSW is to help businesses become more efficient, more profitable, more competitive and to achieve their performance goals. Other benefits include improved staff satisfaction and motivation, lower staff turnover and greater appeal when recruiting.

For more information, and to get in touch with the Serco team, visit the SSW website. There is also information about Skills Support for Redundancy, which offers training support for people at risk of losing their job.

You can find links to these programmes, and other sources of skills development support, on the Think Sandwell Training and recruitment page.