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

The recently published CBI Education and Skills Survey  “Ready to grow: business priorities for education and skills” surveyed 694 employers who collectively employ over 2.4 million people or 8% of those in employment in the UK. The report sends some clear messages to the new Coalition Government on where their priorities should lie.

Skills for Life Headlines

1. 63% of employers want to see  action to raise the standards of literacy and numeracy of school and college leavers
2. Only 46% of employers rate the current competency levels of staff  in low-skilled jobs as good – basic skills in literacy, numeracy and ICT all listed as a concern
3. 52% of employers are concerned about the literacy and 49% the numeracy of the current workforce
4. Extent of basic skills concerns rises with organisation size – among those with >5000 employees 77% report literacy and 69% numeracy problems.
5. The percentage of employers that provided remedial training in the last year:

Weaknesses in basic skills were reported to be a widespread problem significantly impacting on employee’s performance even in fairly elementary tasks and restricting the prospect of moving on to more complex and demanding work.

Encouragingly 63% of firms still see investment in skills as being very important and 58% of employers plan no change in the their training spend with 14% planning an increase even in the midst of challenging economic conditions. Almost 70% of employers will be seeking more cost effective routes such as e-learning for delivering that training.