People and Skills Working Group Conference 2025

The People and Skills Working Group Conference is an opportunity for MOD, Industry and Academia to share experience and best practice, so that the enterprise is able to grow and develop with the increasingly competitive market, and shifting times.

Commodore Richard Purdy, Royal Navy, delivered the Keynote Address to open UKNEST‘s Skills Conference, “Addressing the UK Naval Enterprise Skills Challenge”. He suggested that the “pace and interconnectedness of today’s challenge is unprecedented” and a “war for talent” is not the solution, rather “the answer lies in strategic collaboration that is pre-emptive rather than reactive”. Setting up the day perfectly, he proposed that we have a “duty to take a people-centred approach, with skills-based careers, powered by collaboration”.

We then heard from many other interesting speakers, presenting on a range of engaging topics.

The final presentation of the UKNEST Skills Conference morning session was delivered by Neve Parker, from QinetiQ, the FutureNEST early career professionals Chair, with an insightful view from the Gen Z perspective. This was followed by a panel session that generated enthusiastic discussion and highlighted a number potential solutions to address the “competition vs collaboration” challenge.

During the afternoon session, Amanda Kelleher, from the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK), spoke on the importance of leading from a place of equity: “belonging doesn’t happen by accident, it happens by design”. She also reminded us that “talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not”. Mark Cameron OBE, CEO of The 5% Club, went on to advise that “inclusion must lead diversity” and also warned delegates that rapidly advancing technology is driving a “cadence in skills” hence “skills frameworks must have a continuous evolution”.

Tony Tite, from Lockheed Martin, the UKNEST People & Skills Working co-Chair closed the Skills Conference with a call to arms having thanked all the presenters for their exceptional and thought-provoking contributions.