Hiring intentions at their highest level for six years
12 May 2014
Hiring intentions among UK employers are at their highest for more than six years, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD’s) latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook.
Mon, 12 May 2014Hiring intentions among UK employers are at their highest for more than six years, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD’s) latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook.
The ‘Spring 2014 Labour Market Outlook’ net employment balance has increased to +26 from +16 since the ‘Winter 2013/14’ report. This is the highest score since autumn 2007. The Index measures the difference between the proportion of employers who expect to increase staff levels over those who expect to decrease staff levels in the second quarter of 2014.
The CIPD report is just the latest in a growing body of evidence that the UK labour market is returning to rude health. Last week the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG reported the sharpest decline in staff availability for permanent positions for 10 years in May.
The report finds little evidence that the buoyant jobs market is feeding through into recruitment difficulties for most employers in the short term, but some sectors are struggling to fill high-skilled vacancies.
Just two in five employers report that they currently have vacancies that are hard to fill, which is broadly consistent with previous Labour Market Outlook surveys. Recruitment difficulties are higher in the public sector than in the private sector and employers report that the majority of vacancies they find hard to fill are highly skilled or skilled (71%).
Engineering roles are the hardest to fill, followed closely by management and executive roles, and the most common reason for difficulties in filling vacancies is a lack of technical or job specific skills.
More organisations plan to invest in their talent pipeline than in previous years, with around three in 10 (31%) employers that currently have hard-to-fill vacancies intending to hire more UK graduates, around one in five (22%) planning to hire more apprentices and half (50%) of such employers planning to up-skill existing staff in the next two years.
Gerwyn Davies, labour market adviser at the CIPD, says: “Employers have all too often blamed government policy for skills shortages, when they often have more control and power over the future needs of their workforce. It’s therefore encouraging to see so many employers planning to invest in their workforce now, rather than risk paying a premium for talent when the economy picks up further and skills shortages begin to spread.”
However, he went on to say that investing in the workforce is not all about recruitment: “Employers should also be thinking about how they design job roles that will meet the changing needs of the business and up-skill existing staff to fill those roles.”
Where new recruits are needed in a business, he believed employers would benefit from working more closely with education providers “to ensure that school leavers, apprentices and graduates entering the labour market have the skills and capabilities businesses need”.
The ‘Spring 2014 Labour Market Outlook’ net employment balance has increased to +26 from +16 since the ‘Winter 2013/14’ report. This is the highest score since autumn 2007. The Index measures the difference between the proportion of employers who expect to increase staff levels over those who expect to decrease staff levels in the second quarter of 2014.
The CIPD report is just the latest in a growing body of evidence that the UK labour market is returning to rude health. Last week the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG reported the sharpest decline in staff availability for permanent positions for 10 years in May.
The report finds little evidence that the buoyant jobs market is feeding through into recruitment difficulties for most employers in the short term, but some sectors are struggling to fill high-skilled vacancies.
Just two in five employers report that they currently have vacancies that are hard to fill, which is broadly consistent with previous Labour Market Outlook surveys. Recruitment difficulties are higher in the public sector than in the private sector and employers report that the majority of vacancies they find hard to fill are highly skilled or skilled (71%).
Engineering roles are the hardest to fill, followed closely by management and executive roles, and the most common reason for difficulties in filling vacancies is a lack of technical or job specific skills.
More organisations plan to invest in their talent pipeline than in previous years, with around three in 10 (31%) employers that currently have hard-to-fill vacancies intending to hire more UK graduates, around one in five (22%) planning to hire more apprentices and half (50%) of such employers planning to up-skill existing staff in the next two years.
Gerwyn Davies, labour market adviser at the CIPD, says: “Employers have all too often blamed government policy for skills shortages, when they often have more control and power over the future needs of their workforce. It’s therefore encouraging to see so many employers planning to invest in their workforce now, rather than risk paying a premium for talent when the economy picks up further and skills shortages begin to spread.”
However, he went on to say that investing in the workforce is not all about recruitment: “Employers should also be thinking about how they design job roles that will meet the changing needs of the business and up-skill existing staff to fill those roles.”
Where new recruits are needed in a business, he believed employers would benefit from working more closely with education providers “to ensure that school leavers, apprentices and graduates entering the labour market have the skills and capabilities businesses need”.
