By Jonathan Golby

Jonathan Golby is CEO at Peak Scientific, a leading innovator in the design, manufacture and support of high-performance gas generators for analytical laboratories.

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The NuVu education model can create balance for students. It is not just about achieving grades, it is more about life and project skills that will help students when they come out of education. It teaches practical things they would not have got from the traditional educational system. NuVu encourages and develops initiative. It’s not a case of following a particular methodology. It’s about asking: “how do we go about fixing or solving the problem?” Pupils have a license to develop their own answers and solutions, using their own initiative and intelligence to drive the process. The world is changing every second. Yet education remains broadly the same. As a CEO, I no longer believe grades and qualifications are enough to get ahead in the job market. Employers are looking for practical, transferable skills, not grades. 

For Peak Scientific, it is of great importance that we recruit people able to use their initiative. We do not have processes for everything, and it is not the case that the processes we do have are always right. In engineering we often have a problem that we need to solve, or a product we need to develop. Having people who come through a different education system, where they learn how to use their initiative and are adept at working through a problem in their own way, is hugely beneficial to an organisation like ours. We cannot micromanage and hold everyone’s hand through the different stages of the project. 

Having colleagues with the NuVu thought process and skill set would be a real differentiator in the employee recruitment and selection process. It is sometimes the challenge in the post recruitment process, that people come into the workforce and are lost, because they do not know how to adapt the theory from their education in a practical way. The skills that come from NuVu, particularly in our engineering and project roles, will help us enormously. These individuals will have the experience of working with an open-ended problem, working on solutions, working with others, to people together to ensure the right outcome. 

For us going forward, this type of thinking and education is the type of skill set we will be looking for. Teamwork within a business is also critical, that is not just about how to work as part of a team, it is also the skill of being able to influence others, to achieve an outcome. There is not one job or single role in this organisation. Every single one of our 650 people is interlinked with other jobs and other departments. The ability to be able to communicate well, to interact with other people and departments in a collaborative and positive way is critical. If we did not have that, we would never move forward as an organisation. Consequently, the skills that come from the NuVu approach to education are going to help us as a business enormously. 

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