Trainers have role to play in rebuilding British work force

Up-skilling workers to undertake jobs in areas where talent shortages are still being experienced must be made a top priority if the UK economy is going to pull clear of another economic dip, says the Recruitment and Employment Confederation.

 

The latest Report on Jobs, published by the REC and KPMG, showed an upturn in both permanent and temporary staff placements over the past month, bucking the downward trend of the past few months.

 

Commenting on the current state of the jobs market ahead of the Office of National Statistics’ figures, Roger Tweedy, the REC’s Director of Research, said:

 

“With the public sector squeeze is still to be fully felt, the jobs market remains fragile. However, confidence is slowly increasing among private sector employers, which bodes well for 2011. The feedback from recruiters in many sectors is that the main challenge is going to be a lack of suitably skilled candidates for some of the specific opportunities that are starting to open up.

 

 “Current jobs market dynamics have confirmed shortages in areas such as IT and engineering. The mismatch between available skills and employer demand could provide a hindrance to a private sector-led economic revival. As well as looking at ways of boosting job creation, we need to ensure that we are building an effective pipeline of suitable skilled workers.”

 

Employers should not overlook the potential of existing employees to retrain and take on vacancies that are proving difficult to fill says Michael Millward of Work Place Learning Centre.

 

All too often employers are guilty of pigeon-holing their employees seeing them as only capable of the job they are employed to do today. Yet those same employees have skills and knowledge that their employers are not aware of and the potential to learn new skills.

 

Mr Millward encouraged all trainers to rise to the challenge of the changed economy of 2011 and create development programmes that help current employees identify with their managers the roles they could undertake to allow them to contribute more to the future of the business that employs them.

Members of the Work Place Learning Centre team are available to provide journalists and media organisations with expert comment on all aspects of learning at work.

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