UK Outpaced in Global Skills Race

Careers, Companies, News, Uncategorized / 29 November 2019

Skilled candidates are already at a premium in the UK, with companies finding it increasingly difficult to find applicants with the skillsets they need. This is only going to be exasperated by the fact that the coming years are going to require almost entirely new skills and abilities, as well as a focus of soft skills like empathy and communication. With this in mind, recent research has raised the question: Are UK businesses doing enough to help ensure their workforces are trained and ready for these changes?
UK Outpaced in Global Skills Race

A City & Guilds Group conducted the research using a group of 1300 employers and 6500 employees across 13 international markets. The findings were quite surprising. 

 

Developing Economies Take the Lead in Skills Race


In contrast to what might be expected, the results showed that as far as upskilling and training are concerned, countries with fast-developing economies are catching up to more established ones like the UK at a rapid pace.

Kenya and India stood out in particular. Just under 80% of participating Kenyan employers predicted an increase in learning and development investment in the coming 12 months. A staggering 92% of Indian employers felt the same way. 

The UK results paint a different picture. Rather worryingly, only 54% of UK employers thought they would be investing in learning and development over the next year. A further cause for concern is the fact that employees in the UK don’t think that the learning and development resources put in place by their organisations have been very effective. Only 13% found them to be practical, compared to 31% of Indian employees polled. UK employers are much more confident in their workforce, however, with 75% saying they have the right staff with the right skills for the next five years. 

 

Contributing Factors for Developing Economies


There could be a variety of reasons for these differing perceptions and figures. In terms of developing economies, the diminishing role of actual labour, and a shift to more digital focused economies, is likely to be one major consideration. India and the Philippines are good examples. They have already started to embrace more digitally focused economies, mainly because the ability of manufacturing to provide opportunities for low skilled workers is looking increasingly limited. This doesn’t exempt them from feeling the effects of automation of course. Many repetitive or simple tasks will soon probably be handled by AI or machine learning (chatbots are a good example). Given the reliance workers and businesses in emerging economies have on these kinds of roles, it’s perhaps not so surprising that they expect to feel the impact sooner. 

Secondly, many workers in developing economies are aware of the impact automation could have on their prospects, even if their jobs aren’t directly under threat. Automation will probably further devalue already low earnings, even for those working outside the sphere of its influence. This, in turn, has increased the demand for better and sustainable jobs – something employers have taken note of.

An autoomated workplace where employees work with machines

Interestingly, this places emerging digital economies in a potentially advantageous position when it comes to reacting to rapid changes. Paul Grainger, Head of Enterprise and Innovation at the UCL Institute for Education, noted that: “The foreseeable future is likely to be dominated by emerging digital technologies. These can help individuals and communities to grow, become more agile, develop skills and network with a wider, global community. As these technologies can transcend borders, they help organisations and the communities in which they are based to adapt to the evolving needs of the community and the world at large. They support agility. And as workplace change is increasingly rapid, those regions actively engaged in emerging markets will likely be better placed to manage the tensions between flexibility and predictability.”.

 

UK Employers Need to Listen to Staff


While UK employers might be confident in their staff, around 66% of UK employees think that their companies are managing to keep up with the changing skill trends on the horizon – 5% lower than the global average of 71%. 

This all points to a potentially damaging perception problem: UK employers aren’t investing in new skills or training because they think their workforce is already capable, while their staff tend to feel the opposite. This gap clearly needs to be closed, and quickly. 

British businesses aren’t alone in their relatively slow uptake of learning and development for new skills, however. In the US, an even smaller amount of employers (25% in the States compared to 42% in the UK) thought that digital transformation would have any significant effects on their business. If we then compare this with our earlier examples of Kenya and India, the figures were much larger: 65% of Kenyan businesses and 62% of Indian businesses thought that digital transformation would significantly impact them.

While the apparent lack of uptake by employers in the UK when it comes to training is certainly cause for some concern, there are some additional factors to consider. It could be that a large number of UK employers are holding out for government support with training. Whichever party ends up in government, they’re quite likely to offer financial incentives and support to help upskill the workforce in light of digital evolution. Whether a business should wait for this to happen, in the hope of potentially reducing training costs, is another matter entirely. 

If employees lose confidence in their employers as a result of a lack of training, they will probably uproot and move elsewhere, and this could cause serious problems for businesses. Retention will fall, and it will be even harder to find skilled candidates – surely something no company can afford with the current squeeze on skilled applicants.

In the end, it seems a large amount of UK companies may need to seriously reassess their approach to upskilling, or risk being overshadowed by hungrier, more agile businesses in developing economies. 

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