The telecommunications industry is developing at a breathtaking
pace so developing its workforce to stay one step ahead of those
changes is a priority for the St Helens company.

Thanks to the SkillWorks programme, Lake Technologies has now been able to access an impressive range of training from digital
data technology to health and safety and even presentation skills.
Technical Director Alan Dawson explained:

“The funding assistance was a huge benefit to us. We had already started the process of attending some highly-technical courses but they are so expensive that without this funding we simply would not have been able to offer them to as many employees.

“The impact on the business has been very positive indeed. It has certainly given us much greater flexibility when we are scheduling our work. Because we have increased the number of employees trained at a higher level we have obviously increased our ability to put different engineers into specific projects. For example, we now have more staff qualified in computer telephony integration (CTI),
which is a core activity for us, and so fulfilling large CTI contracts is now far easier for us.

“One of the leading edge technologies at the moment is Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, and through SkillWorks we have been able to increase the number of skilled engineers able to install the technology and increase the skills of the account managers who sell the solutions to our clients.

“We have been able to undertake a really broad range of training. Several members of staff have qualified in Windows Server
skills and Windows Platform skills and because so many manufacturers use the Windows operating system these are
industry-wide qualifications so they are of real value.”

As part of the SkillWorks programme St Helens Chamber Workforce Development Advisor John Decamp carried out a training needs analysis at Lake Technologies.

“John Decamp spoke to every member of staff. That analysis highlighted the things people were interested in. One of the
suggestions was improved presentation skills and that training will now be carried out. In the past we had tended to concentrate on technical training for our engineers but we are now broadening our
training to include all employees — such as enabling staff to brush up on computer skills.

“The flexibility has been very important to us. We were never just presented with a list of courses and asked to choose the appropriate ones, we were able to say what we felt the business needed and the Chamber helped us to identify the right options for us. “It has opened our eyes and helped us to see how much we can achieve”.

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