Ahead of the curve: Why the West Midlands needs employers to lead on digital skills, not follow
26-05-2026 Other
Kevin Varshi, Managing Director, Netcom Training
This article was written for the 2026 West Midlands Tech Review (WMTR). You can view the full report by visiting: https://techwm.com/resources/
There is a familiar pattern in how the UK approaches digital skills. A new technology emerges. Employers feel the pressure. Providers scramble to build a course. By the time learners graduate, the landscape has moved on. The system is permanently reactive and the gap between industry needs and training deliverables never fully closes.
The West Midlands has an opportunity to break that cycle. Not by building more courses, but by changing who shapes them. That is the premise behind Netcom Training’s Innovation Employer Board and it is why we believe employer-led skills development is the most important lever the region has yet to pull.
Founding members of the Netcom Training Innovation Employer Board at the inaugural meeting, February 2026.
The problem isn’t the technology, it’s the system
Research conducted by Netcom Training in partnership with the Greater Birmingham, Coventry and Warwickshire, and Black Country Chambers of Commerce surveyed 558 employers in 2025. Only 22% described themselves as ‘very confident’ that they have the digital skills to realise productivity and competitiveness advantages from technology. Nearly four in five businesses are operating with some degree of uncertainty.
The barriers employers cited were telling: cost of training (30%), lack of time to commission and manage provision (20%) and uncertainty about what training is needed (18%). More strikingly, 53% of employers were entirely unaware that government-funded digital short courses existed. What is failing businesses is the connection between their needs and the training system designed to serve them.
Our focus groups reinforced this further. Businesses consistently told us the biggest obstacles to technology adoption were not technical, they were cultural and structural: staff resistance to change, a lack of leadership confidence in driving digital transformation and provision that is hard to navigate and rarely tailored to sector-specific needs.
An employer board built to predict
Netcom’s Innovation Employer Board, launched at our iCentrum HQ in Birmingham in February 2026, was established to address precisely this. Bringing together senior leaders from Intel, Cisco, PwC, QinetiQ, WM5G, ARUP, Six Degrees, OneAdvanced, Version 1, EvoPhase, Curium Solutions and QSafe, the Board’s purpose is not to review what Netcom already delivers but to determine what it should deliver next.
Its remit is forward-facing: forecast emerging technology trends, translate them into skills priorities and feed that intelligence directly into curriculum design. The meeting produced substantive, honest insight: that SMEs are consistently underserved, that AI investment risks bypassing the workers who need it most and that siloed delivery remains one of the region’s most persistent weaknesses.
“Right now, great work is happening across the system, but too often it’s disjointed and siloed. This Board gives us the opportunity to bring employers, training providers and government together in a more joined-up way. By aligning our efforts, we can unlock practical solutions, better support SMEs and develop the talent our region and the wider UK economy urgently needs.”
Tony Shergill, Chair, Innovation Employer Board / CEO, BritAsia TV Network
Tony Shergill, Chair of the Innovation Employer Board and CEO of BritAsia TV Network, at the inaugural board meeting, February 2026.
What the region needs to do next
The West Midlands has the ambition, the partners and the evidence. What it needs now is coordination and commitment. That means employers actively engaging in skills design, not waiting for a talent pipeline to appear. It means funding structures that support fast, flexible, community-accessible provision. And it means a regional narrative that treats digital skills as the infrastructure on which every sector’s growth depends.
Netcom is inviting West Midlands businesses to get involved as curriculum partners, as employer board contributors or simply as organisations willing to hire from non-traditional talent pipelines. The ask is modest. The return is a workforce that is built around what the region needs next.