UK Skills Gap Widens, Threatening Productivity Levels

Skills shortages predominantly affect businesses that are gearing up for growth. Figures from the Festo survey show that the lack of skills is a direct cause of downtime and reduced profitability for 23% of industrial and manufacturing organisations.

The research conducted by Festo clearly highlights that manufacturing training has been severely under invested over the last decades and this has led to a potentially volatile combination of issues.

The baby boomer generation is now nearing retirement, and within manufacturing the average age is already over 50.  Even with the proposed changes to the state pension age, industry will not only need to put together plans to retain key older workers who may be thinking of taking early retirement, but also put in place upskilling programmes to ensure that their current workforce have the required skill and knowledge for todays production environment.

If you need assistance, don’t delay!

Contact your local ERIKS representative to discuss how the experts at Festo Training and Consulting, can help you to overcome the UK skills gap with their I-D-E-A four step structured approach.