Finalist

Community Engagement Initiative of the Year Award

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Summary

The University of Bradford (UoB), in collaboration with SAS, introduced the SAS STEP initiative in the city of Bradford to train and re-skill recent graduates and employees who were furloughed during the Covid-19 pandemic in data analytics skills. The collaborative university-industry partnership between Bradford and SAS and the socio-economic and demographic backdrop to the city of Bradford provided the setting for SAS, one of the largest data analytics software providers in the world, to pilot the SAS STEP initiative. The aim of the pilot programme was threefold: i) to support recent graduates who were unemployed through free training and certification in data analytics, ii) to support those who were furloughed during covid-19 back into employment through new digital skills, and iii) to support post-pandemic economic recovery by contributing to bridge the STEM, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science skills gaps that presently exist in the market. The initiative’s overarching aim was to provide unemployed graduates and professionals with data analytics skills, employment opportunities, and work-placements. Access to learning resources and supporting SAS software was provided free together with the time of senior professorial staff at the university and senior board level staff and training-educators at SAS. The main impacts of the SAS STEP initiative can be summarised as follows: supporting the move to a digital jobs-economy, SAS STEP programme adopted on a global basis by other SAS country offices as best practice for corporate social responsibility / jobseeker reskilling programmes; exemplifying academia-industry partnership to deliver an award-winning philanthropic programme.

Key People


Prof. Vishanth Weerakkody
Professor of Digital Governance and Associate Dean for International and Enterprise
School of Management,  UoB



Prof. Sankar Siverajah
Professor of ICT and Circular Economy
School of Management,  UoB



Ms. Elaine Dean
Business Engagement Manager
School of Management,  UoB



Mr. Urfan Faqir
Project Leader
Career & Employability Services,  UoB



Mr. Nigel Armstead
Customer Education Manager
Education,  SAS



Mr. Geoffrey Taylor
Head of Academic Engagement
Global Academic Programme,  SAS



Ms. Chris Dillon
Learning Consultant
Education,  SAS



Ms. Georgina Spearing
Learning Consultant
Education,  SAS



Ms. Emma Hopkins
Learning Consultant
Education,  SAS



Mr. Ben Kriefman
Programme Manager
Finance,  SAS



Mr. David Smith
Communications Specialist
Marketing,  SAS



Mr. Tarvinder Gill
Digital Marketing Specialist
Marketing,  SAS


Acknowledgements

The SAS STEP team would like to thank SAS’ global, senior leadership team for their ongoing support for the programme.
The University of Bradford would like to thank Bradford District Council and Job Centre Plus in Bradford for their support in promoting the SAS-STEP programme and for helping to identify and screen candidates during the pandemic.

Images

SAS STEP ANNOUNCEMENT

SAS STEP Advert

SAS STEP logo

University News Announcement of SAS STEP

University of Bradford SAS STEP News Release

SAS STEP PICTURE 1

SAS STEP PICTURE 2

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

How SAS STEP Changed Lives: The Story of James Lancashire

Before the COVID-19 pandemic struck the UK in March 2021, 47-year-old James Lancashire from Cumbria (in the North of the UK) already had more than 20 years of work under his belt in a career promoting the outdoors working for The Outward-Bound Trust, a charity which aims to unlock the potential of young people through discovery and adventure in the wild.

As a senior instructor, he was qualified in the majority of popular outdoor activities and specialised in delivering high adventure, high impact learning journeys for young people and apprentices. His job sadly came to an end during the COVID-19 pandemic when he was made redundant. However, he soon saw SAS-STEP as an opportunity for a career change.

James discovered the SAS STEP Programme, and with it the opportunity to learn basic data literacy skills for free. He already had some experience of using data from his university degree course in Cartography & Geography. After completing the Data Literacy course, he decided to embark on the more advanced Data Analyst course, available for free to job seekers through the SAS-STEP programme. Parallelly, James actively sought employment opportunities and successfully secured a senior executive role as a data management consultant at Butterfly Data, a company specialising in data science, which is based in the UK and Canada. James commented: “Simply put, I would not have got this job without the SAS STEP Programme. I found myself unemployed in the midst of the pandemic”. James’s story can be found here: https://www.sas.com/en_gb/news/press- releases/2021/july/long-time-youth-worker-among-first-to-secure-data-management-role.html

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

Learning points experienced include:

1. Focus on the outcomes and the solutions will follow • defining and agreeing on the core outcomes of an initiative and/or project at kick-off allowed the university-industry collaboration to succeed by ensuring that the entire team delivered their tasks whilst understanding the ‘bigger picture’ and what success looks like
• this approach allows project components to change over time without scope creeping or timelines extending but still delivering the core programme aims and objectives
2. Use new initiatives and projects as staff development opportunities to bring fresh perspectives • enabling the programme team members from UoB and SAS to share ideas and allowing them to undertake new project roles outside their comfort zone brought new ideas and approaches to traditional and trusted methods
• learning consultants worked with senior academics to explore capabilities offered by existing learning systems and acquired new knowledge and skills
3. Improved engagement and communication with customers, partners, suppliers and colleagues • engaging with local communities to understand and qualify the learners’ needs, including small and micro businesses
• the University-Industry partnership provided academic rigour to the learning content and unparalleled connections with the local communities and likely participants of the SAS STEP programme
• digital learning content must be exciting, engaging and relevant but still needs human interactions
• ‘nudge behaviour’ increase learning completion and satisfaction rates immensely when introducing new initiatives
• learn how to position value when introducing new initiatives, products and services What

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

The SAS STEP programme is currently offered in two regions by the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions Jobcentre Plus network of employment agencies and social security offices. University of Bradford and SAS would like to expand this to a nationwide offering.

The Data Engineering learning pathway will be launched in June 2022 providing further opportunities to acquire knowledge, skills and practical experience in the preparation of data for analytical and operational uses.

The SAS STEP programme is being adopted by SAS on a global basis as a philanthropic initiative to improve economic and social mobility through learning and to bridge the world-wide shortage of data practitioner and STEM-related skills in today’s employment market.

Research undertaken at UoB during the pandemic with 1000+ SMEs identified the lack of data literacy and digital skills as a key inhibitor which impacted the small and micro-business economy during the pandemic. UoB and SAS will be expanding the SAS-STEP programme as one of the interventions planned to support the SME sector in Bradford. The team also propose to extend the programme to local schools by introducing data analytics using SAS to secondary school students as part of the schools’ outreach programme that the university runs in the region. This will help promote STEM subjects to schools and encourage secondary school students to study university degree programmes which have a data analytics element, such as UoB’s Logistics, Data Analytics and Supply Chain management programmes, and fill the future skills gap in data analytics.


KEY STATISTICS

4

Learning pathways – Data Literacy, Data Analyst, Data Scientist and Data Engineer

45

Pilot programme participants in the Bradford-SAS pilot

4.5%

Social media engagement score. Industry average is 0.5% for global brands and 1.56% for Kim Kardashian

1,777

Programme participants to date since formal launch in March 2021

41%

Participants self-identified as female

49%

Participants aged under 34 years

44%

Participants self-identified as ethnic minority group members

67%

Enquiries converted into programme participants

255

Programme completions to date

4.8/5.0

Average participant satisfaction rating

10%

Increase in data practitioner job role vacancies

1/3

SAS software capability rated third in application skills requested

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