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Open for Business Roadshows to support skills and innovation growth across region

Sheffield Hallam University is holding a series of Open for Business Roadshow events across the South Yorkshire region to help businesses understand the range of support on offer to help transform the way they work.

Businesses from across the region are invited to sign up to attend the free events to find out about the opportunities on offer in diverse areas of business including Higher and Degree Apprenticeships, internships and placements, knowledge transfer partnerships and access to the University’s academic expertise and facilities through the £Sheffield Innovation Programme (SIP).

SIP is a regional initiative, run in partnership with the University of Sheffield, which aims to stimulate business growth and promote the development of long-term relationships with SMEs. The support is free to access for SMEs in the Sheffield City Region and can take the form of bespoke research and innovation based consultancy, workshops and other events.

The roadshow events are being hosted by the University alongside local enterprise partners in Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley and are open to local, national and international businesses to discuss collaboration opportunities and practical solutions to current challenges.

Conor Moss, Director of Education and Employer Partnerships at Sheffield Hallam, is leading the University’s drive to join forces with more businesses to help create employment opportunities and better prospects for Yorkshire as its economy grows.

He said: “We want to be a university for the broader region with an applied approach to creating knowledge, innovations and solutions that impact on people’s lives and being a beacon for what a university can do for and with its community.

“We have set ourselves bold ambitions and they have brought a focus to our work here, specifically around high-level skills and how we help to bridge that gap between providing graduates who are highly employable and impactful from day one and working hand in glove with businesses to develop their own staff and help them with their skills gaps.

“We work particularly closely with the Local Enterprise Partnership to identify hard-to-fill job areas, aiming to increase graduate employment in small and medium sized enterprises in the Sheffield City Region.”

Higher and Degree Apprenticeships are a relatively new and growing area and the University is keen to help businesses understand how they can work for them - including how to make best use of the Apprenticeship Levy.

Mr Moss added: “As well as supporting businesses to access to our talented graduates, we want to work within those companies and help with their own people development through the newly developed degree apprenticeships funded by the Apprenticeship Levy.

“We have a long history of partnerships with Yorkshire employers to upskill their staff in sectors like health and engineering and in management or leadership, which all need a very flexible delivery model which manifests itself in those degree apprenticeships.

“There are funding, political and compliance differences with offering degree apprenticeships, but at the heart of it all we are developing people for the next stage of their career- and we have always done that and will continue to do it because we are particularly good at working with businesses to design programmes to help them grow and develop their talent.

“Sheffield Hallam has become an anchor institution for the region because of its fundamental work in changing the skills situation with an important role to play in its economic growth and health and with the opportunities we can help realise comes the economic progress we all want.

“These roadshows are an opportunity for you and your business to be part of that economic progress and one not to be missed.”

Visit the University’s £website to sign up to come along to one of the free events. To find out more, or to talk through your specific needs, please get in touch on £business@shu.ac.uk or by calling 0114 225 5000.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sheffield Hallam University .