Katie Lewis, Workplace Mental Wealth

When lockdown was eased it became clear there were thousands of staff in the industry not legally able to work because their qualifications had lapsed.

The economics of the sector were tough enough without the challenge of a workforce that couldn’t legally work without their qualifications being refreshed.

Sport England and CIMSPA recognised this shortfall and launched the Retrain initiative to fast-track the revalidation of these qualifications – 11 weeks later the campaign’s app was up and running and by May 2021, 18,000 people had already been able to requalify.

Before Retrain kicked off, 30,000 professionals had been planning to leave the industry as a result of uncertainty about the future.

Working behind the scenes we used agile working methods to build a digital matching tool, to identify where qualifications were needed and where training or retraining was available.

The Retrain effort rapidly got the industry back into working order, thanks to this agile approach to building the matching tool from scratch in such a short time.

For all the amazing efforts of Sport England and CIMSPA and their partners, we’re still a long way from recovery – we’re continuing to see the impact of the pandemic, even though restrictions have been lifted and facilities open to all.

ukactive’s projections from March this year were for a potential loss of a third of all facilities and up to 100,000 jobs.

Thankfully, however, new initiatives are coming to the fore to redress this, including the Retrain programme.

Retrain has shown us the power of smart digital thinking combined with an agile approach. While we celebrate the success of the initiative, this isn’t the time to stop – we need to look forward. Add into the mix much needed government support and we will help bring our industry back to life. More: www.HCMmag.com/freestyle