A new poll of SMEs across the North West reveals – while 2023 may be a challenging year – they still expect on average a 26% growth in revenue. The Skills Horizon barometer, launched by the Skills for Life campaign, asked 1,250 SMEs in England about their challenges and opportunities when it comes to skills and recruitment in the year ahead, has found many are exploring the best ways to strengthen their workforce to achieve this growth. In the North West specifically, it reveals 62% are planning to invest in upskilling their workforce, bolstering their capabilities for the year ahead.
The Skills for Life campaign aims to help SMEs understand all the training and employment schemes available to them, including Apprenticeships, T Levels, Skills Bootcamps, HTQs and Multiply numeracy courses. Businesses who are considering hiring employees can access a range of government programmes offering work experience or upskilling existing staff, some of which offer financial incentives. This moment in the campaign follows last week’s National Apprenticeship Week, dedicated to celebrating apprenticeships and the newer introduction of T Levels to highlight their positive impact on communities, businesses, and the wider economy.
Over two fifths (41%) SMEs in the North West rank staffing challenges – such as recruitment and skills – amongst their top three concerns for 2023. However, a similar number (39%) plan to invest in building digital skills within their company and a third (33%) will encourage staff to engage in current or free training resources – such as Skills for Life Bootcamps. Many SMEs in the North West are hoping this will help them tackle the challenges they face with recruitment and staffing in 2023, as they cite top recruitment and staffing concerns as not being able to recruit new employees with the right skills (38%) and not having enough employees with the right skills (38%). Nearly a third (30%) are seeking to hire from broad education routes such as apprentices and T Levels students.
Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education Robert Halfon said:
“Boosting skills in key sectors like digital, manufacturing and healthcare is essential to building a skills nation and the government is investing in resources and skills qualifications – spending over £3.8bn this Parliament.
“This investment is being recognised by SMEs who are planning to invest in upskilling their workforce this year, and I would encourage businesses of all sizes follow suit.
“Whether it’s through apprenticeships, T Levels or courses in essential numeracy and literacy skills, there are free and flexible ways for employers to tap into the highly skilled workforce they need to thrive.”
Becky Toal, Managing Director at Crowberry Consulting – an environment, ethics and corporate responsibility management consultancy in Chorley– says,
“Many small businesses have recruitment front of mind at the moment. It’s been a challenge to find talent as energy and environment are quite niche areas to recruit staff in and very specialised. However, having worked with universities on apprenticeship programmes for a decade, the business has been able to dip into a strong talent pool to find people with the right skills.”
“We will continue to offer apprenticeships as we know they add a real strength to the organisation. It enables us to mould people to our vision and values and give them the training needed for our businesses. It helps them by giving them an opportunity and it helps us as it’s economically effective.”
To find training and employment schemes for your business, as well as support on how to implement these, visit: find-employer-schemes.education.gov.uk/.
