Manufacturers’ trade organisation Make UK has this week, in collaboration with Sage, unveiled a 2030 Skills report entitled ‘2030 Skills: Closing the Gap’.
The report details how British manufacturers have been left to compete with leading City banks and leading innovation companies in order to secure employees with the requisite digital and technical skillsets. Employees of this ilk are in short supply, with competing businesses attempting to entice them from a shrinking talent pool.
It also acknowledges the manufacturing arena’s move toward digitisation within production processes. The pace at which companies are moving with automation leaves businesses competing to recruit the best-qualified technical engineers and data gurus with the most up-to-date skills. However, these skills are in demand across various sectors of the economy.
'2030 Skills: Closing the Gap' forecasts that the already intense battle to acquire and retain talent is set to become even more heated in the years leading up to 2030, as more businesses strategically plan for a future with sustainability and automation at the forefront of their operations.
A staggering statistic emerging from Make UK and Sage’s findings is that half of the manufacturers surveyed have warned that they already are unable to source the talent that their companies need locally. Around 62 per cent have added that they will not find it easy to secure the skills they need to help their firms be competitive in the economy of 2030.
A common consensus within is that to immediately address labour shortages in the short-term and allow time for the government’s Skills and Post-16 Education Act to take effect, the government must revise the Shortage Occupation List which has not been updated since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Make UK CEO, Stephen Phipson, comments: “To address the issue of labour shortages which is now at a critical point, government must ensure that the revised Shortage Occupation List is in place as soon as possible to plug the huge skills gap in data and digital technicians who are simply not available to employers from the domestic labour force.”
Paul Struthers, managing director for the UK and Ireland at Sage, highlights that reform to the Apprenticeship Levy is also among the options that government should be considering to allow businesses to create industry-ready talent of its own.
Struthers says: “UK manufacturers are going through a period of transformation adapting their traditional operations and adopting new technologies to be more digitally enabled, remain competitive and reduce costs.
“This evolution has created a need for more specialist, digital skills, required to maximise the benefits of technology. With labour shortages on the rise, urgent reform of the Apprenticeship Levy is required so that manufacturers can access and nurture the talent they need to remain successful and continue to grow.”
Make UK’s senior policy manager for employment, Jamie Cater, also mentions some of the pitfalls of the post-Brexit immigration system, which had limited the ability of businesses to recruit labour from overseas.
Cater says: “Automation, digitalisation and net zero are transforming UK manufacturing, and driving major changes to the skills that employers need over the next decade - but securing them will be a challenge.
“It is not only developing the right technical skills in the current and future workforce that is important, but also recruiting and retaining people now. As labour shortages have begun biting, a complex and costly new immigration system and a high number of workers approaching retirement risk making the situation even harder for manufacturers as they compete for talent.
“To make sure manufacturers can access the right skills to thrive in 2030 and beyond, we need to target apprenticeship incentives at areas of labour and skills shortages; reform the apprenticeship levy and wider tax system to support employer investment in training; improve government support for access to leadership & management skills; and crucially we need to see a revised Shortage Occupation List in place as early as possible in 2023.”
On October 7, The Leaders Council will be releasing a special episode of its podcast series featuring Make UK's Jamie Cater. In this interview, Make UK and Sage's '2030 Skills: Closing the Gap' report will be discussed, alongside Make UK's take on the government's Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
