Small and medium-sized businesses in London can take advantage of a free IT skills healthcheck and cut-price training courses under an initiative backed by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and European Social Fund (ESF).
The ICT4SME programme (www.ict4sme.co.uk), launched this month by IT training company eCademy, aims to help small and medium-sized businesses meet their growth and development potential through workforce training. Companies in the central London area with fewer than 250 employees are eligible for the scheme.
“First we assess a company’s current situation and their skills need, not just IT skills but generally,” said Deepa Taneja, operations manager at eCademy. “We then produce a plan outlining what’s required in that company.”
“Some contribution still has to come from the employer, but we have managed to bring that down to a negligible level."
The ICT4SME website will also serve as network for small companies to share their skills with each other. “The website has been designed so we can list other people’s training projects as well as our own,” said Taneja. The project is open to people living or working in Camden, Islington, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth and the City of Westminster.
If the project proves to be a success in London, eCademy hopes to extend it to small and medium-sized businesses across the country.