This July, Paula Fowmes and her colleagues at FITV gave the Corporation excellent coverage as part of their package on barriers to business growth – as identified in the recent FIDC Business Climate Survey.
Shortage of skilled labour, access to labour, upskilling of the local workforce, affordable worker housing, and immigration matters are all familiar obstacles for the Islands’ business community. Paula was keen to open up the debate, and to hear what plans we have for addressing the problem.
As Gordon and Louise explained, we hope to see strong initiatives for skills and labour in our new Corporate Plan, due later in the year.
The Falkland Islands Development Corporation is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Martin Slater to the recently advertised position of Managing Director.
Mr Slater held the position previously and, following a year of absence from the Islands exploring new horizons, has taken the opportunity to return and pick up the reins again. Martin has been working in change management for the NHS in the UK and will bring valuable new skills and fresh experience to the role.
Martin re-joins the team at a time of great change and uncertainty for our clients in the private sector. With the position of MD at the Corporation’s subsidiary FIMCo in the capable hands of Keith Heslop, Martin will be able to focus his time and attention on delivering FIDC’s objectives. The results of the most recent Business Climate Survey will be feeding into a revision of the Corporation’s Business Plan which will take place over the coming months. Mr Slater will participate in that process, arriving in post ready to lead his team on delivering its strategic mission.
Linking contract opportunities to local business providers is the service from FIDC’s web-based SAROS.
Originally created to put the oil industry in touch with our Islands’ excellent enterprise community, the scope soon extended, making the platform a useful tool for all those with contracts to fulfil.
Over the last year or so, the ‘members’ of SAROs struggled with its technical shortcomings, and FIDC commissioned a rebuild and upgrade to make it work and look better for users. That’s now done.
The SAROS full revamp will make it fit for the future – and give a better user experience for its members. The well-known local IT specialist Brian Jamieson did the tech rebuild and designer Tony Ellis polished up the graphics.
Proving that ‘contractor’ does not have to mean “here today, gone tomorrow” - today Gordon Ackroyd reaches four years of service with the Corporation. Joining FIDC from Cornwall, UK, as Business Development Officer to provide his professional support to individual clients, he particular enjoyed working with the hospitality and catering enterprises - although definitely not because he wants more places to get his fix of takeaways (He is still waiting for a Chinese to start up here).
2018 saw Gordon move to Strategic Projects Manager, where he focuses on the needs of the wider business community, for example developing FIDC’s Skills for Enterprise programme, supporting the Wool Innovation Programme, the Fresh for the Future project and producing FIDC Annual Reports.
We would all like to thank Gordon for his hard work and his sense of humour, and always being available as the Corporation’s dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar checker.
Hopefully we can keep him under contract for another 4 years.
Many of you will have seen that in addition to the direct forms of support from FIG, we at FIDC have made available advice and resources to help you manage your enterprise through the crisis.
We can now offer – FREE as a service to the business community – an online Business Resilience ‘starter’ course.
Please see the flyer below. At this stage we have up to 10 places available FREE. This session conforms to the important ISO 22301, which many will find increasingly important to their work.
ISO 22301 Security and resilience – Business continuity management systems – Requirements, is a management system standard published by International Organisation for Standardisation that specifies requirements to plan, establish, implement, operate, monitor, review, maintain and continually improve a documented management system to protect against, reduce the likelihood of occurrence, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptive incidents when they arise. It is intended to be applicable to all organizations, or parts thereof, regardless of type, size and nature of the organisation.
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Building Resilience E Flyer
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Working towards a highly successful, diverse and sustainable economy for the Falkland Islands