Over 6% of all vacancies are hard to fill due to skill shortages in the available labour pool according to the UK Commission’s Employment Skills Survey Results for 2015 released in May this year. The shortage in skills is proving increasingly problematic for employers across the UK. In volume terms, there were 209,500 reported skill-shortage vacancies which was an increase of 43% from the 146,000 reported in 2013.
Typical skills lacking in the labour market included management and leadership skills, as well as complex analytical skills. However, two-thirds of employers (66%) had funded or arranged training or development for their employees over the previous 12 months, with around half providing any off-the-job training (49%) or on-the-job training (53%). Among employers where no formal training had been provided in the last 12 months, most (68%) had provided other development opportunities for their employees like: supervision to guide employees through their job role, providing staff with opportunities to spend time learning through watching others perform their role or allowing them to perform tasks that go beyond their strict job role.
Other notable results from the report are summarised below with percentages representing the proportion of 91,000 employers surveyed.
To read the UK Commission’s full Employment Skills and Survey Results for 2015 please click here.
