FAR-SIGHTED managers should be investing in skills if they want to take full advantage of improvements in the global economy.

This is the view of Sir John Gray, president of the Institute of Directors in Wales, who said it was easy when times were tough to give skills improvement a low priority.

Sir John, writing in the IoD Wales February bulletin, said the media was full of advice to small and medium-sized businesses on how to weather what looked like being a stormy year. These included reducing 'fat' in the workforce, sub-contracting and aggressively attacking new markets.

"Another piece of advice which often surfaces at this time is the need to improve the skills of the workforce," he said. "Again, this is something which good management should be looking at all the time but it is easy to give it a low priority when the going gets tough.

"Yet it is precisely now, with the global economy in turmoil, that the far-sighted manager should be considering where to position his firm ready for the end of the world recession."

Sir John said changes in the world economy would see the introduction of new technologies, new markets and intense competition from new operators.

"Others will have acquired the skills, the lower-wage labour force, the attractions for inward investment and the favoured position in the EU which helped Wales in the recent past," he said.

"We shall have to find new ways of attracting investment and new markets for new products.

"That will undoubtedly involve new skills in the workforce at all levels. For instance, innovation will be an important contributor to a firm's chances of success - but only if it has the skills to exploit it."

He said there were many sources of skill-acquisition in Wales, which were neither difficult to find nor expensive.

But as well as improving workforce skills, management needed to be strong. "There is much evidence to suggest that weak management skills in Wales are probably one explanation for our poor performance relative to competing regions in the UK and Europe."

Among IoD Wales events on the diary is a luncheon at the Marriott Hotel, Cardiff, on Friday, April 5, at which the guest speaker will be Neil Kinnock, vice-president of the European Commis-sion. The former Gwent MP and leader of the Labour party became a member of the European Commission in 1995, with responsibility for transport. Four years later he became vice-president, charged with the task of reform and modernisation.