Contractors working through an umbrella company might be interested to learn that nearly 50% of the UK’s SMEs are struggling to find the right staff.
The British Chamber of Commerce surveyed 6,000 small businesses and discovered that 45% of them felt it was either quite difficult or very difficult to find employees who were a good fit for a position.
We now have 2.57 million unemployed individuals in the UK and this figure could rise further as more people are made redundant from the public sector. Despite this, a lot of firms say candidates simply don’t possess the right skills. They complain that candidates are deficient in literacy and numeracy, whilst softer skills such as communication and timekeeping are also in short supply.
Only 45% of companies said they were very or fairly confident when it came to recruiting graduates, and that percentage dropped down to 29% when it comes to the recruitment of school-leavers with A-levels or an equivalent qualification.
The survey also showed that private sector bodies have little confidence when it comes to hiring ex-public sector workers or people who have spent at least six months without a job.
John Longworth, the BCC’s director general, said companies need capable workers in order to remain competitive and many SMEs want to expand their workforce but are struggling to find candidates with the right skills.
We have record youth unemployment and yet companies feel our education system is not equipping young people with the basic literacy and numeracy skills they need to survive in the world of work. Furthermore, employers feel that youngsters are lacking in the ‘softer’ skills, such as communication and timekeeping, which are essential to a successful work environment.
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