Shaping the future of skills

We are part way through the process to meet the skill needs of the sector. It is called the Sector Skills Agreement – a contract between employers, government and stakeholders. We have a one off opportunity to get a system that meets our needs.

In the first stage over 2,000 employers took part in shaping this future direction. We found that staff turnover across the sector is 30 percent. This is the equivalent of losing 590,640 people a year costing the sector £886m annually. Thinking ahead, by the 2012 in time for the London Olympics we would have lost 4,134,480 people, costing our sector £6.2bn.

Here are some other things we found:

• France has nearly double the level of labour productivity of our sector in the UK
• 61 percent of management vacancies are considered hard to fill – it is getting increasing difficult to recruit skilled or experienced managers
• Over 20 percent of applicants for chef roles, lack the required skills and experience
• Customer service skills came top in the list of skills required
• Over the past two years 63,000 new workers from the new EU Accession States have entered the sector – an increasing number of international workers are filling are vacancies

Where are we now?

We are about to embark on stage two to understand what employers need from the learning system and how providers, stakeholders and employers can work together to ensure an effective training system with the appropriate funding for the sector. Stage three will identify the gaps between employer skill needs and skills provision.

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