Today’s post comes courtesy of Lorna Tyrtania, ThirdForce Senior Product Manager

The latest Labour Market Intelligence report for the Food and Drink Manufacturing and Processing (FDMP) Industry is an interesting insight into the market. FDMP is vital to the UK economy 415,200 people are employed across some 11,300 workplaces, many of which are well known household names.

GB Workplace Size Profile—by staff  number;

• 1-10 staff             (67%)
• 11-49 staff           (21%)
• 50-199 staff          (8%)
• 200+ staff            (4%)

The industry is highly productive, contributing;

• 16% of the UK Manufacturing industry’s turnover;
• 15% of the UK Manufacturing industry’s Gross Value Added (GVA), and
• 6% of all UK exports.

Skills Needs and Learning Supply

13% of UK Food and Drink manufacturing industry workers have no qualifications, which is likely to reflect the  occupational structure of the industry where 51% of workers are employed as Process, Plant and Machine  Operatives or within Elementary roles.

Report Highlights on Training

More than half of industry organisations arrange training (whether on the job, off the job, or both) for their employees. Smaller companies are much less likely to arrange training, and the training they have invested in is likely to be on the job.

In SMEs particularly, the recession appears to have led to a reduction in training activity.  Overall the proportion of Food and Drink Manufacturing and Processing (FDMP) employers that provided training in the last 12 months reduced from 67% in 2007 to 57% in 2010; 56% in 2007 to 46% in 2010 amongst employers with 10 or fewer staff. We’ve already talked about the dangers of cutting back on training in an earlier blog post.

Workforce training normally focuses on mandatory requirements—food safety, hygiene, health & safety—basic competency skills that employees need to develop. Some companies offer accredited NVQ Food Manufacture qualifications, which tend to be at level 2 and address basic food and drink production skills. In some case this extends to providing sector Apprenticeships.

The overall perception of the quality of training provision for the industry is that it is either satisfactory or good.

Employers are looking for training that directly impacts on their business performance and improves business efficiency and the effectiveness of their workforce. They report training needs in Leadership and Management, Lean Manufacturing and process improvement.

Technical, practical or job-specific skills are the skills most thought to need improving over the next 2-3 years, followed by IT skills and product development skills.

The most significant training benefits for businesses in the industry are those associated with intermediate level skills. Investment in intermediate level skills brings broader benefits, not just internally in terms of job satisfaction and career opportunities, but also in meeting business goals, innovation and responding to the market.

Formalising training is significantly and positively linked to immediate operational benefits, as well as building capacity.

Key barriers to training identified in the report were:

• Costs of training
• Production pressures (off-line time)
• Lack of time to organise training

The good news is e-learning overcomes each of those identified barriers check out our White Paper on Open All Hours technology to learn more.