Business owners have little faith in government to plug growing skills shortage
A new study of business leaders reveals major concerns around the widening skills gap in the UK.
The report, conducted by personalised workwear, uniform and PPE supplier MyWorkwear, revealed 64% of the 107 companies surveyed are suffering from an acute skills shortage and only 45% of them believe the government will be able to solve the crisis.
The results revealed that over half (55%) admitted that they are struggling to recruit or retain existing staff, whilst, going against popular opinion, nearly three quarters of respondents thought the Employment Rights Bill will have a positive impact on the current skills landscape.
Other findings from the survey suggested that more industry specific training would help, and this was closely followed by nearly a third of firms calling for an increase in funding support.
As a branded workwear provider – who partners with businesses in fifteen different sectors – MyWorkwear is seeing the impact of the skills shortage first-hand through customer ordering patterns and day-to-day conversations.
“Having been in business since 1976 and working with so many industries, we often pick up trends across a wide variety of sectors, and the skills shortage is definitely something impacting a large majority of our customers,” explained James Worthington, Co-Managing Director at MyWorkwear.
“There is little confidence from businesses that the government’s approach will solve the crisis we’re seeing, and this is undermining confidence with 60% feeling the situation has worsened over the last six months. You can’t really make the most of new opportunities, if you don’t have the talent in place to meet customer requirements.”
He continued: “A lot of the measures introduced have fallen on deaf ears so far and I believe there’s a lot of scepticism around the latest Industrial Strategy and whether it will actually benefit small to medium-sized companies.”
The MyWorkwear report did show some positivity for the workwear industry, with almost 80% of businesses stating that branded workwear boosts employee pride and 68% indicating that it helps them to retain staff in what is a very volatile jobs market.
