Three new NASC guidance documents on the way, with recruitment and workforce in focus

NASCs technical team are currently finalising four new guidance documents for release, three of them entirely new additions to the NASC library.

The three new documents sit together as a set, and all of them address the same underlying issue: how scaffolding businesses find, fund and bring on the people they need.

EG2 Adult Work Experience Guidance covers work experience for adults, an area with different considerations to placements for school and college age candidates, from insurance and site access through to what a meaningful placement should actually involve.

EG3 Funding and Grants sets out what funding and grant support is available to scaffolding businesses and how to go about accessing it. For smaller firms in particular, funding that exists but goes unclaimed is a recurring frustration, and this document is designed to make the landscape easier to navigate.

EG4 Best Practice Recruitment Methods looks at recruitment itself. With the skills gap consistently named by members as one of the biggest challenges facing the sector, this covers practical approaches to attracting candidates and the methods that are working for firms across the industry.

Alongside the three new documents, an updated version of SG20 Consultation and Participation with the Workforce is due for release, bringing existing guidance on workforce engagement into line with current practice.

Taken together, the three new documents reflect where a good deal of member concern currently sits. Technical guidance has always been the backbone of what NASC produces, but recruitment, funding and workforce development are now among the issues that come up often, and the guidance library is expanding to match.

Rob Boardman, Head of Training & Education at NASC, said:

"Guidance on how to erect a scaffold safely will always be central to what we do, but our members tell us that finding and keeping good people is one of the hardest parts of running a scaffolding business today.

“These documents are a direct response to that. They are practical rather than theoretical, and they are aimed at giving members something they can actually use, whether that is running a work experience placement properly or working out what funding they might be entitled to."

NASC will be releasing the new guidance set in September, so watch this space!