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Employers must train for future demands

Apr 3 2007

By The Journal

 

The importance of a skilled workforce to employment is becoming more and more apparent with the gap in productivity widening as a result of the lack of skilled workers in the UK.

Bullish long-term forecasts for the UK economies, which includes the North-East, are resulting in a demand for a robust trained labour force, but research reflects that the UK is behind its European counterparts in ensuring that skilled employees will be readily available to meet this demand.

At least half of the 20% productivity gap between Britain and Germany is due to differences in skills. This includes both literacy and numeracy and specific qualifications both academic and vocational.

Also in Britain and the US, more than 20% of adults have the lowest level of literacy and numeracy on standard international tests - this is twice as bad as in Sweden, Germany and Holland. More worryingly, the Sector Skills Development Agency has found that in Germany and Sweden, young adults are much more literate and numerate than older people - this is not the case in the UK.

However, the UK's higher education is rated as good as anywhere in the world and more than 40% adults now see the advantage of getting higher level skills.

But almost half of those over 16 will receive very little formal education after leaving school. Although it would be foolhardy to expect a continuation of the uninterrupted run of growth which the region has experienced in recent years, it would be surprising if the UK and the North-East grew at a slower rate than it has over the last two decades.

Therefore, employers must begin to use the expertise of the training/learning and skills organisations in the region to start training their staff to take advantage of this growth.

 

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