Week 4: Who else is involved in your sector?

Introduction

Last week you investigated your organisation’s immediate business context in order to gain a more detailed understanding of the sector and its important elements. You examined three main areas – customers, competitors and suppliers – in order to appreciate what influences your organisation and why it operates in the way it does. You were also introduced to concepts such as customer satisfaction, the unique selling point (USP) and the supply chain. Finally, you were able to apply some of these ideas to your own organisation and situation.

This week you will be asked to consider the background to your organisation and job. This includes the other structures and bodies that help to underpin and reinforce people’s employment, including professional and sector organisations, national and local government, and trade associations and trade unions. As part of this, you will explore the role of professional and vocational qualifications and how these might help you to develop your career.

Watch Lynne Johnson as she introduces Week 4.

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Transcript

LYNNE JOHNSON

Hello, and welcome to Week 4. Last week, you thought about customers, competitors and suppliers in order to gain a better understanding of some of the things influencing your organisation and the way it operates. You considered customer satisfaction, unique selling points and supply chain, and started to apply some of these ideas to your own situation. This week, you will explore the main functions of professional and sector bodies and see how qualifications in these areas can help your own career progression. You’ll also explore how national and local government are an important source of information, policy and support for organisations and how to use the services and resources provided by trade unions and trade associations to research your own sector in more detail, so that you can develop your own career.

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As with previous weeks, you’ll need the Toolkit  or your notebook to jot down your thoughts and responses to the activities.

By the end of this week, you will be able to:

• describe the main functions of professional and sector bodies
• outline how professional or sector qualifications can help your career progression
• explain how national and local government are an important source of information, policy and support for organisations
• use the services and resources provided by trade unions and trade associations to research your sector in more detail.

1 What are professional and sector bodies and what do they do?

Figure 1

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A doctor and a young patient.

Figure 1

In Week 1, profession was defined as ‘a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification’. Think of doctors, accountants, architects, teachers, engineers and others. These are all regulated by law and typically by a professional body.

Sometimes known as professional organisations, associations or even societies, professional bodies exist primarily to further the interests of that profession and of individuals within it, and to defend the public interest. They oversee professional practice and often have an important role in monitoring and maintaining professional standards, together with developing and awarding professional qualifications. They may also have an important regulatory role in making sure that professionals are doing their jobs properly and in investigating complaints against their members.

Very often, membership of the appropriate professional body is necessary for an individual to practice in that field; a good example of this in the UK is the Law Society, to which all solicitors must belong before they can practice.

Is your job regulated by a professional body? If so, this could be a good starting point for your research and could help you with the activities that occur later this week.

1.1 Functions of professional bodies

The overall functions of professional bodies vary widely according to how they are set up and organised, but the following list is fairly comprehensive:

If you look at this list closely, you should be able to identify a number of areas where a professional body might be useful to people who are not members of the profession but are interested in finding out more. Understanding more about a particular profession – how it is regulated, the qualifications required for entry and progression, the networks that exist and the support provided – can be hugely valuable to anyone thinking about entering that profession.

Visit the Law Society’s website, the independent professional body for solicitors, to discover what is provided in addition to elements devoted to professional practice and policy. What do you notice about the range of topics covered?

The range of topics is very extensive and include:

• events and training
• publications
• research and trends
• communities including women lawyers, ethnic minorities and lawyers with disabilities
• campaigns and consultations
• news including social media
• careers including how to become a solicitor
• for the public – advice including common legal issues and frequently asked questions.

1.2 Industry sector councils and bodies

In addition to the many professional bodies, there are a number of sector skills councils and bodies set up by the government to support employers in developing apprenticeships, reducing skills gaps, and boosting the skills and learning of the workforce. There are more than 20 of these bodies, led by employers and overseen in the UK by the Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise. They exist to plan for future skills needs in their industry, contribute to the development of national occupational standards, design and approve apprenticeship frameworks, and devise qualification strategies.

Sector bodies cover 80 per cent of the UK workforce. Some examples of these are:

• ConstructionSkills – construction
• Creative Skillset – TV, film, radio, interactive media, animation, computer games, publishing, photo imaging, advertising, and fashion and textiles
• Financial Skills Partnership – finance, accountancy and financial services
• Skills for Health – health
• Skills for Justice – courts services, custodial care, forensic science, fire and rescue, police and law enforcement.

You can find a full list of all bodies on the Federation for Industry Sector Skills and Standards website.

Although these bodies are primarily set up to meet the needs of employers, many also see their role as being to publicise careers to the general public, educating them about the benefits of training and gaining skills and qualifications. Learning, training and qualifications are the focus of the next section.

2 Professional and sector qualifications and their importance

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Graduation day, with graduates in gowns and mortarboards.

Figure 2

In the previous section, qualifications were highlighted as being a significant area of activity for professional and sector bodies. Life would be very difficult without the existence of professional qualifications, i.e. any qualification that confers a right to practise, whether as a solicitor or as a carpenter. How would you be able to choose the right person to mend a burst pipe if there were no universally accepted plumbing qualifications?

Of course, just having the right qualifications does not automatically mean that a professional is supremely competent at what they do. Professional qualifications, however, allow us to have some confidence that an individual has received training up to a level sufficient to indicate their competence.

Understanding qualifications, and the training required to achieve these, is fundamental to understanding your sector. Take the example of a doctor. All doctors do a certain amount of core training, normally two years pre-clinical and three years clinical training during their first five-year degree course. They then follow a two-year foundation programme covering general medicine and surgery, but also more specialised fields such as anaesthetics, paediatrics or general practice.

After this, they will probably opt for a particular field of medicine requiring further specialist training and the gaining of more qualifications over many years. There are also opportunities throughout a medical career to do continuing professional development in order to keep up to date with new techniques and advances.

Those medical students at the start of their first degree will be expected to have some understanding of this progression and, while their plans may understandably be uncertain, they will be asked about these at interview. In other words, they will have to demonstrate an understanding of their sector before they begin.

In the same way, it is important for you to understand the qualifications within your own sector and how these can shape your future progress and options. They might not be as difficult to achieve as those of a doctor, but they will almost certainly be as important.

So, knowledge of the training and qualifications that apply to any particular field or sector can be fundamental to planning your future career path and may also indicate other routes for you to follow. For example, in the case of the motor mechanic in Activity 3, gaining these qualifications allows them, and their employer, to be listed on a professional register open to the public. There may also be opportunities to use these qualifications with appropriate experience to move into more senior management roles within the industry.

There is, in fact, a national qualification framework in the UK (covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland) based on the Regulated Qualification Framework (RQF) and the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ). It has nine levels incorporating vocational qualifications such as NVQs and BTEC, and academic qualifications such as GCSEs, AS/A levels, degrees and postgraduate-level qualifications.

To find out more about this framework, you should visit the GOV.UK website. Use this framework to identify your highest level of qualification but also the level of any vocational or professional qualification that you have. You may find that these are very different; it is not uncommon to have a level 6 vocational qualification but to be working towards a professional qualification at level 3.

The national qualification framework will give you a good understanding of the range of qualifications available and how they match against each other. Of course, you also will need to find out more about the specific qualifications available in your sector and their level in the national structure but contacting the appropriate professional or sector skills body should be a useful first step in this process.

3 Government information and support

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The Houses of Parliament in London.

Figure 3

Another important source of information about business and the economy is the government, both national and local. Several national government departments are responsible for supporting, advising and liaising with business and employers as well as implementing government policy decisions.

Since July 2016, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has the primary authority in this area with its responsibilities including industrial strategy and business (BEIS, 2021). It has a plan and set of priorities linked closely to that of the government, works with agencies and public bodies, and is, therefore, a key agent in setting the context within which all UK businesses and employers operate.

Visiting the BEIS website reveals much about this policy and implementation framework but also allows you to access BEIS research into different areas of the economy that might provide you with an insight into your particular sector or issues that affect it.

BEIS is not the only government department, of course, and many others will have policy responsibilities for different areas of the UK economy. It is worth consulting these if you want to find out more about the legislation or policy that might affect your particular sector. Bear in mind, however, that a significant amount of responsibility for policy and implementation has been transferred to the regional administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so if you live in these areas you might need to widen your search appropriately.

3.1 Local government

Local government in the UK, consisting of unitary authorities, counties, districts and boroughs, is also a useful source of information about your sector. As this information will be relevant to your local area, this might actually be more immediately useful than the general overview provided by national government. Although many levels of local government are largely responsible for putting national government policy into practice, power has been transferred to them so that they retain some discretion about implementation and will make decisions based on local factors and context.

Many parts of England have two tiers of local government:

• county councils
• district, borough or city councils

In some parts of the country, there’s just one (unitary) tier of local government providing all the local services. The three main types are (Source: www.gov.uk:

• unitary authorities in shire areas
• London boroughs
• metropolitan boroughs

They will have different responsibilities for functions, including roads and transport, education, waste, police, fire and rescue, housing, strategic planning, education, libraries, social services and many others.

In the context of understanding your sector, it is important to remember that such bodies will normally consult with local businesses and conduct research on the local economy before making major decisions. This information may be valuable to you when researching your sector and provide you with insights from a different and more local perspective.

As an example, if you look at the business section of Leicester City Council’s website, as well as useful links to information about health and safety, business courses, trading standards, business rates and so on, you will find links on the site to initiatives to provide a safe and family-friendly city centre, the Leicester Economic Action Plan, and support available for employers to develop apprenticeships. These give a useful insight into the business priorities of Leicester City Council and their possible impact on local businesses and organisations in the near future.

While government policies, at national and local levels, might seem remote from most people’s lives, they have a huge impact on the context within which organisations operate. Understanding more about these will help you to make sense of what is happening within the local and wider economy, and to anticipate developments. You can use this knowledge to consider how this might affect your career progression and opportunities.

4 Trade unions and trade associations – information and support

Figure 4

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A trade union protest, with the people holding banners and placards.

Figure 4

In this section you have considered the crucial part played by professional bodies, as well as national and local government, in setting the context within which people are employed and earn their living. These are very important agencies that in different ways plan and regulate how the economy functions. They also oversee the role of business and other organisations within this, and the working conditions that affect the lives of individuals, allowing them to progress and develop.

There are other bodies that also play their part in this overall process. It is important for you to know about these, even though their impact on your life may be less obvious than the ones you have considered so far. These are trade unions and trade associations, which you will look at in turn.

4.1 Trade unions

Trade unions have been around for many years in the UK, having their origins in the early nineteenth century and growing stronger until they reached their peak membership in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, especially in the private sector, their influence has waned somewhat, but they still represent around 6.4 million workers and are particularly powerful in the public sector.

Unions represent the interests of their members, who normally work in a particular industrial or business sector of the economy, and provide them with a collective voice in protecting wages and working conditions. Unions affiliated to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) range in size from those such as Unite, representing engineering, manufacturing, science, finance and media workers; and UNISON, representing local government, health and public service workers; to smaller ones such as the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Association of Racing Staff.

Trade unions tend to be in the news when their members vote for industrial action during a dispute with employers. Their lower profile work in conducting economic and industrial research is less well-understood. Unions also provide financial, legal and health and safety advice to members, and play an important role in education. For example, Unite provides a range of online lifelong learning courses, including ICT, English for Speakers of Other Languages, basic English and Maths, and many specific courses aimed at union officials. In addition, their research department provides research briefings for members covering a range of topics and responds to government consultations on areas related to the interests of its membership.

These various services will provide different benefits to you. The advice provided on aspects of working life, such as pensions and health and safety, can help you to improve your understanding of, and control over, your immediate working environment and that of your colleagues. At the same time, the lifelong learning courses will enable you to learn new skills important for developing your career, while the research briefings might help you to understand better the background to developments within your industry or sector.

Obviously, all these services will only be open to you if you are a union member so the first step is to find out whether there is a union presence in your workplace and to decide whether or not to join.

4.2 Trade associations

Trade associations – sometimes called trade bodies and employers’ associations – are organisations funded by businesses operating within a specific industry. Their primary focus is to promote their specific industry and its views to government, other legislative bodies and the general public, to provide support to their member companies, and to foster collaboration between their members with the broader interests of the industry in mind. Their main activities centre on public relations and advertising, but they are also involved in lobbying, education, publishing, running conferences, networking and charitable events, and providing education.

In the UK, there are many trade bodies and associations and you may sometimes see their representatives being interviewed in the media. Some of the best-known UK trade associations include:

• Association of British Insurers
• Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
• UK Finance
• National Federation of Builders
• Oil and Gas UK.

As with trade unions, these organisations provide a wide range of services to their members. For example, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) members ‘represent companies of all sizes who invest in discovering the medicines of the future.’ (ABPI, 2016). The ABPI website lists the ways in which the association works with, and on behalf of, its members. As the pharmaceutical industry is research based, the ABPI supports its members by contributing to debates and consultations on areas that include drug safety, animals and research, manufacturing safety, electronic health and others. It works closely with the UK government and the NHS on drugs value, pricing and access.

The ABPI provides a significant amount of careers information for anyone interested in a career in the pharmaceutical industry. It also oversees a patient organisation forum to ensure that the views of organisations that engage with patients using drugs (such as the Teenage Cancer Trust, the Epilepsy Society and the Liver Trust) are taken into account. Finally, it produces information for schools on the pharmaceutical industry and provides a publications library that lists reviews, posters, guidelines and industry information.

For anyone working in the pharmaceutical industry and seeking progression within it, this is a massive resource providing insights into the industry, reflections on the past, thoughts about the future and, through membership, contacts for networking purposes.

The ABPI is just one example of a trade association and many others will provide similar services and benefits. The Trade Association Forum website lists over 100 trade associations with a searchable directory of its members. If you are not sure whether your organisation belongs to a trade association or which trade association this might be, visiting this site would be a good starting point.

Trade unions and trade associations, therefore, although they might not be uppermost in your mind when considering how to find out about your sector, represent a very important source of information, advice and support. Both types of organisation have a very specific perspective on the employment world and will approach it from this particular standpoint; so bear this in mind when you research their resources.

Now all that is left for you to complete this week is the first badge quiz.

5 This week’s quiz

It’s time to complete the Week 4 badged quiz. It is similar to previous quizzes, but this time instead of answering five questions there will be fifteen.

Week 4 compulsory badge quiz

Remember, this quiz counts towards your badge. If you’re not successful the first time, you can attempt the quiz again in 24 hours.

Open the quiz in a new tab or window (by holding ctrl [or cmd on a Mac] when you click the link).

6 Summary

This week you have investigated some of the background to your organisation and job. By looking at the other structures and bodies that surround and underpin the employment world – professional and sector organisations, national and local government, and trade associations and trade unions – you have been able to access rich sources of information, advice and contacts to help you develop your understanding of your sector. In addition, you have considered the role of professional and vocational qualifications in supporting career entry and development.

You should now feel that you can:

• describe the main functions of professional and sector bodies
• outline how professional or sector qualifications can help your career progression
• explain how national and local government are an important source of information, policy and support for organisations
• use the services and resources provided by trade unions and trade associations to research your sector in more detail.

Next week you will look at professional networking and how to make the most of your contacts so that they become active networks of support for your career goals

You are now half way through the course. The Open University would really appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future improvement in our optional end-of-course survey, which you will also have an opportunity to complete at the end of Week 8. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

You can now go to Week 5.

References

Acknowledgements

This free course was written by Martin Pennington.

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The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Images

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Figure 2: ©Getty. Picture by Nicolas McComber.

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Figure 4: 110,000 Throughout Ireland Protested Against 64 Billion Euro Bank Debt - Were You There? in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.

Text

1.1: Extract from: @TotalProfessions.com (2016) Role of Professional Bodies Available at http://www.totalprofessions.com/ more-about-professions/ role-of-professional-bodies

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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