Paul Price-Hazlehurst Joins Growing Futures Group as Director of Programmes

The role of Director of Programmes is new to the organisation and will focus on growing and operating across current, new and future programmes.

Paul has been settling into the company for a few weeks now, and has made quite an impression during that time, taking time out of his busy schedule to get to know colleagues at all levels and getting stuck in to the day-to-day activities of the company’s two brand – Futures for You and Futures for Business – on a regular basis.

Paul enters the business at an exciting time of growth:

Having held a number of senior positions throughout his career, Paul brings with him the experience of having worked in a variety of education and employment-focused environments, and the ability to see things differently in the ever-changing sector of education, training and skills.

An early example of this will be the incorporation of, and increase in, the use of digital within our delivery of the National Careers Service. This is an initiative which will be rolled out across all National Careers Service providers, and is one which Paul has a vested interest in, as an established presence on social media.

The internet is becoming increasingly more important in all areas of life – and the education, training and skills sector is no exception. However, recent statistics show that there is currently a large divide in internet use, with 5.3 million, or 10%, of the adult population never using the internet.

Those people could be missing out on key digital skills and the five key benefits they bring. These are:

• Earnings: Digital skills can lead to increased earnings of 3-10%
• Employability: Digital skills are attractive to employers and the ability to use the internet effectively makes looking for opportunities easier.
• Communication: Those with digital skills are able to communicate with family, friends and colleagues up to 14% more frequently.
• Time: using technology to access services such as government processes or banking can save someone with digital kills up to 30 minutes per transaction.
• Money: people who use digital skills to shop online rather than in-store save an average of 13%

By encouraging those who use the National Careers Service to embrace the use of technology and develop their digital skills, it is hoped that more people will be able to benefit in these key areas and that the number of people who can access the necessary support and guidance to achieve more will increase.