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We all have a part to play in fixing the digital skills shortage: an interview with Naomi Timperley

Naomi Timperley

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Naomi Timperley

Computing speaks to Growth and Innovation Consultant, Co-Founder of Tech North Advocates, and Women in Tech Excellence Award winner Naomi Timperley about her work with tech start ups and scale-ups, and the entrepreneurs of the future.

Naomi Timperley is the epitome of portfolio working, finding multiple ways to help start-ups and scale-ups and develop the digital skills pipeline in the North of England. She explains:

"About fifty percent of my time is designing, delivering and developing entrepreneurship programmes, and I've done that with several universities including University of Salford and Manchester Metropolitan University, but also the private and public sector."

Timperley cites some examples of her work to support entrepreneurship, including a project with University of Salford working with young entrepreneurs from Oman, work with an organisation called Brighter Sound which supports people in the music industry, and work with a Manchester charity called Digital Advantage, on an entrepreneurship programme for women in the music business.

"With MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University) I work with digital, creative, and tech businesses, so people who have ideas and they want to build them into a business. I do lots of that," she explains.

"The other part of my time is actually helping businesses grow. That might be helping them get to new markets, or it might be helping them with new products and services. I'm Design Sprint trained so I can help people with the ideation process, build those value propositions and take them to market."

Some of this is via Timperley's consultancy GSI which she co-founded with entrepreneur Vikas Shah MBE.

"I'm also a trustee of a number of charities that have a focus on supporting young people, especially around digital skills. I'm a big advocate of women in tech and supporting the digital skills pipeline. I volunteer for a careers and enterprise company in Manchester and I'm an enterprise advisor to two schools."

Helping to build digital skills fit for the future

Timperley admits that her voluntary work isn't entirely altruistically motivated. "Unless we've got a pipeline of talent coming through a lot of the businesses I've worked with will cease to exist."

Part of the problem lies in the pressure on school careers education. In her experience, it isn't managing to convey the incredible breadth of tech career choice.

"I'll go into a school and put-up lots of different tech sector job titles and most of the kids don't have a clue what they are. They know about web developers and programmers but not UX designers or Scrum masters.

Schools are just the start of the problem. The tech skills crunch is having a serious and detrimental impact on young tech businesses, and by turns on local and national economies. However, although the skills crunch is a problem affecting all parts of the UK, it isn't evenly distributed. Although Manchester and Leeds are growing tech hubs (a fact underlined by the inaugural Manchester Tech Festival due to take place in October,) many young adults still make the decision that their digital skills will be best utilised in London or the southeast of England. There are many smaller towns and coastal regions that are struggling to compete in the digital skills marketplace.

Timperley believes that the hybrid working model will help businesses in these areas recruit the skills they need. However, what she also sees increasingly is London based tech companies employing people based in Greater Manchester based on remote working contracts and the occasional office visit. London salaries go a lot further in Manchester which makes it much harder for local business - particularly of the size that Timperley is typically working with - to compete for talent.

However, she then makes the interesting observation that for increasing numbers of young people, there's far more to work than the money. Culture is crucial.

"They want to work for an organisation that that that has a great culture and they want to work for an organisation that's going to have an impact."

Timperley also thinks that potential tech employers have to take some responsibility for making sure their messages are heard in local communities, citing what she calls the Greater Manchester ecosystem as an example.

"Greater Manchester covers ten regions and has a population of nearly three million people. It's partly the responsibility of local businesses to go out and talk to people in those areas about the opportunities that they've got. You don't need the constant commute anymore that might have put off people from Wigan or Rochdale for example working in Manchester. People can work from home two or three days a week."

Businesses also have to make sure that the schools and the colleges and the universities are aware of the opportunities out there as well. One of the things that I'm involved at Salford (Timperley is Chair of the University of Salford Industry Advisory Board) is making sure that the curriculum at the Business School is as industry focused as possible so when our students leave, they get jobs. When it comes to skills, I think everyone has a responsibility and a part to play."

Timperley also believes that the companies and not-for-profit organisations who run skills bootcamps should focus on the type of transferable skills that will help their graduates find jobs. She also believes, based on her work in schools, that the syllabus for subjects like GCSE Computing should be changed to include more industry focused skills, and that attitudes to vocational alternatives to A-levels such as the new T-levels which are backed by businesses and tailored to get young adults ready for working life need to change. Lingering snobbery about vocational further education isn't helping anyone, least of all tech employers.

Like many of her fellow leads in the Global Tech Advocates community, Timperley believes that the type of skills required in tech are evolving. She is passionate about advocating for skills such as complex problem solving, innovation, creativity, leadership and resilience and about the need for educators and employers as well as job seekers themselves to realise that these are the areas they need to be focusing on - for everyone's benefit.

Computing and CRN host the Women in Tech Festival live in London on 3 November and digitally on 9 November.

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We all have a part to play in fixing the digital skills shortage: an interview with Naomi Timperley

Computing speaks to Growth and Innovation Consultant, Co-Founder of Tech North Advocates, and Women in Tech Excellence Award winner Naomi Timperley about her work with tech start ups and scale-ups, and the entrepreneurs of the future.

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