The people product: People 1st is the Sector Skills Council for the leisure industry. Duncan Rowe meets its chief executive.(Profile--People 1st)(Interview)(Company Profile)

"Our industry, faces major challenges including poor commitment to training, low productivity, unfilled vacancies, staff churn, uneven morale and poor motivation." Does this sound familiar? These are just some of the challenges facing employers in the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism industries, which People 1st, the newly created Sector Skills Council, is charged with addressing.

Chief executive of People 1st is Simon Turl, former managing director of Travelodge. His task is a big one: the businesses that his organisation represents generate more than 42bn [pounds sterling] annually, equivalent to 4% of GDP, and employ more than 1.6 million people through 180,000 organisations. The sector contributes 21.5bn [pounds sterling] a year to the Treasury through direct and indirect taxation.

He explains: "There used to be 72 National Training Organisations. Each industry sector had its own, charged with making sure that learning and skills development within a particular industry was being delivered consistently and to a proper standard. The government felt that the NTOs didn't have enough engagement with employers, and decided to develop SSCs as an alternative.

"They [SSCs] cover a much wider range of industry sectors. People 1st covers 14 sectors, and has a broader range of skills development and an involvement in schools, as well as higher and further education. The recent Tomlinson review has cemented the importance of these links, as vocational training will be more of a focus earlier on in the learning process. We hope that the recommendations outlined in the report will help address key industry issues, helping to get more employers training and to get more training for employees."

The first task the organisation faced was to try to establish some meaningful statistics for the industry. "In a lot of areas they don't exist at all", Turl says. "We are looking to reach a high calibre of reporting, so that press, government, employers, whoever, come to us first. There are far too many statistics and figures quoted in this industry by people who don't know what the real figures are.

"The problem with that is that it allows government some 'wriggle room' in deciding investment priorities. We have got to be spot on with the statistics that we have so that we can twist arms towards getting more investment for chefs, education, whatever it might be to get the right people for our industry."

"The other major challenge that we have faced to date, and that we'll face going forward, will be to get significant employer engagement. People 1st as an entity should not have opinions, it's there to reflect the opinions it gathers from the industry. But with an industry that has 200,000-plus businesses, if you're not getting to at least 10,000 of these, you're not getting a representative opinion, and that's what we have to do. Once you have that sort of credibility, it's very hard for people to argue against the things that you are telling them. If 90% of our 10,000 employers believe that NVQs are not working, it's a very powerful lobby. But we need to get to that sort of level.