If companies are really worried about skill shortages, why don't they train people?

[EddieStobbart]

Am I missing something?

Costs money

I agree and thought the same when I saw the headline, as it has been too easy to bring in a bright, shiny, new EU (or other non citizen) rather than train up ours.

I think there has been around 2 million new apprenticeships over the last parliament, and if memory serves, there was a new 3 million target for this parliament.

I caught the end of an interview last week re the government bringing in a training Levy on companies, mentioned below but it sounded wider than just the large companies, where they get charged, but get it back when training workers to a specified level.
feweek.co.uk/2015/07/08/summer-budget-osborne-announces-apprenticeship-levy-for-large-businesses/

Apparently there was to be a relatively short government to business consultation period, to ensure they get the legislation right.

Apparently too many companies don't train up, then poach from those that do, so if they all pay the Levy upfront, to get it back, all should then invest/train up their own staff.

Where I work, if you ARE sponsored to do any additional training but leave within 2 years then you have to pay it back. That seems to be a pretty standard thing.

I reckon it's because it's generally easier to poach trained up staff from somewhere else.

But then there are skill shortages. Surely it's better to just set penalties for leaving within certain time scales.

Exactly!
People had jobs for life because once employed, the employer updated their training and skills, building them up for the next level.
But no, now education is supposed to make children work-ready, rather than actually educate them.

EddieStobbart .... I thought the point of the new policy is to put the onus on ALL companies to train, to make it fairer business to business, but I'd guess the companies would continue to try and claim it back from employees - but unless changing industry, in theory there should be less staff poaching/turnover?

W00t .... "But no, now education is supposed to make children work-ready, rather than actually educate them."

The problem was we weren't even doing THAT.

“England’s young adults trail the world in literacy and maths”.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24433320

"Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests."

"A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts."

"England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries."

“More than four in 10 employers are being forced to provide remedial training in English, maths and IT amid concerns teenagers are leaving school lacking basic skills, it emerged today.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9322525/School-leavers-unable-to-function-in-the-workplace.html

“A study by Nationwide finds that more than half of secondary school pupils struggle to work out change in their heads, prompting claims that maths lessons are leaving them "unequipped for everyday situations"
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10631728/Pupils-cannot-count-out-change-due-to-poor-maths-skills.html

“One question involved asking them to calculate the correct change from £100 if they had bought shopping totalling £64.23, but more than half – 52 per cent – gave the wrong answer. It emerged that more than a quarter were more than £1 out.”

All this chat about graduates doing non-graduate jobs makes me feel very sceptical. Perhaps they once were non-graduate positions when the employer was providing a lot of training but now they employ graduates who are expected to have a higher level of expertise (or maturity), paid for by the employees themselves and the company expects to provide a far lower level of training.

Obviously I can't speak for every graduate but the ones my company takes on always send out beautifully worded emails!

You need to take "skills shortages" with a truckload pinch of salt.

In my experience, "skills shortage" translates as "not enough people who will accept the crap wages". Which is not quite the same thing.

Look an any random job advert, and price up what someone with those skills should be earning according to the industry average.

Now look at the salary (where advertised). If no salary is advertised it is axiomatic that it will be significantly lower than the industry average.

LurkingHusband - totally agree. The bleating from the engineering sector is laughable.

Engineering graduates with fantastic mathematical skills go straight to The City and potentially earn millions trading exotic financial instruments while engineering firms still think they can offer them £30k and little chance of progression to high paid management jobs.

Guess what - very few people want to be an engineer

Also firms don't want to make any long term employment commitment to employees beyond next week so no one is going to invest in anybody as a long term employee either.

Skills shortage is actually competent management shortage. Seriously, pupils can't make change? So what, that is what a till is for. What skill is needed in the world today, that cannot be learnt on the job? Engineering and similar certainly, but for £30k? It is called Market forces. Shortage of supply means price goes up, surely....

Depends what skills are being talked about.

Numeracy? Schools should be handling that.
Ability to make an amazing PPT? Not the school's remit--companies should be training them.

"There has been a collapse in firm-based training: most notably, many apprenticeship schemes have been abandoned... Most weeks I see letters to newspapers signed by some CEO fulminating against restrictions on migration. IF they need skilled workers, why don't they train them?"

from the economist Paul Collier, on the massive decline in company-based training that we have seen over the last couple of decades.

books.google.co.jp/books?id=2XgxAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA128&lpg=PA128&dq=%22paul+collier%22+%22why+don't+they+train+them%22&source=bl&ots=Pu-wMZYUuh&sig=5NsBWK1H5t_EytEGekG7biVYS-8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIiMqkut3KxwIVh6KUCh39sA6l#v=onepage&q=%22paul%20collier%22%20%22why%20don't%20they%20train%20them%22&f=false

I am a civil engineer and have never had any interest in The City! The organisation I work for runs a sponsored Foundation Degree to train up future staff.

When DS was 15 and deciding if it was A levels or BTEC, his school had a careers evening, where a local university attended and gave a presentation.

The salesman went on about the advantages of a degree, highlighting a recent graduate (3 years ago) who was now earning £40,000 working for a US bank in New York, having studied Political Economics. Because that's what humanity needs. We may not be able to find a cure for cancer. But we sure as hell will know which party to blame it on.

What was Blair's target for uni, 50% of the school leavers, what did he achieve, just a few percentage increase - with so many studying subjects like 'Sociology' & 'Media Studies' - as if we then didn't have enough new spin doctors.

Under Blair/Brown the City never grew so ££££ fast, and while any trader in New York earning £40k must be worse than pants (soiled?), the international capital markets have taken billions of people out of poverty e.g. emerging nations.

And if large companies couldn't have borrowed via the capital markets over the past 30-odd years, they'd be hundreds of millions less western jobs as well.

I don't see a skills shortage. I see organisations asking for more and more experience in everything, more and more qualifications, and paying less and less.

It's extraordinarily hard to get started in anything as a youngster, or retrain as an older person, because of the amount of voluntary work you're expected to have done now. Who of working age can afford to do voluntary work? Have you seen the amount of selecting and requirements and hoops you're expected to jump through even to get that?

It's massively an employers market, in a broken economy, and they are taking the piss.

Oh yes, couple that with the attack on professions and deprofessionalisation in everything. We now have healthcare assistants doing the job of nurses, who are doing the jobs of doctors. Teaching assistants doing the jobs of teachers who are busy sorting out paperwork. Library assistants doing the job of librarians while volunteers do that of assistants. There's something similar in the police isn't there? All coupled with lower wages for doing those jobs of course.

If anything I'm seeing massive increases in skills in the workforce, and of course when you cope with doing more work for less your reward is to get landed with yet more work. And they wonder why productivity is falling.

Every year a big nob in the organisation sacks half the staff, expects the remaining staff to take on double workload, and work longer hours. Then when productivity suffers they take on a bunch of previously experienced low paid newbies to do the BS jobs.

Repeat ad infinum.

Said bignobs salary doubles each year too, that's where the money goes and it's supposed to be good for the economy.

Skills shortage rhetoric also encourages suspicion re people being unemployed, which helps this pro-austerity agenda.

It's more BS in other words!

Squidzin ..... "Every year a big nob in the organisation sacks half the staff, expects the remaining staff to take on double workload, and work longer hours."

Gissa example of your big nob, in a big organisation, sacking half his (or her) staff.

Because you're that far removed from real life, u never had a job in the private sector.

Far from it, I worked in the private sector all my life, even in a relative hire and fire results driven industry, but never known half the people fired.

So let me cut to the chase, I think you are talking leftie idoliogical bollocks, so was asking for an example.

Indulge me.

Up or out is not an uncommon management philosophy. Neither is cull the bottom 10% yearly. So not sure why IsItmebut is huffing. Not 50%, necessarily, but really not at all unheard of.