Research published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) today claims underlying problems within the economy and labour market caused by years of unhelpful policy decisions risk undermining economic recovery.
One of these problems has been a focus on skills supply, with governments having neglected to increase demand among employers for investment in skills.
OECD figures show the UK has the second highest level of ‘over-qualification’ – 30% of workers believing they are over-qualified – and there are far fewer graduate jobs than graduates.
The report points out that Britain has the highest proportion of low-skilled jobs in the OECD after Spain. A total of 22% of UK jobs require no more than primary education level skills, compared with less than 5% in countries like Germany and Sweden.
The CIPD warns that low-skilled jobs and under use of higher skilled workers are major factors in the UK’s poor productivity levels.
CIPD chief executive Peter Cheese said he would like to see a Workplace Commission set up to address key barriers in the UK employment market.
He said this would fill a “glaring absence at the heart of government policy”.
“Unless we address the demand side of the skills equation, we will fail to improve our poor productivity or to achieve the sustainable increases in real wages that have become such a dominant feature of the current media and political narrative,” Cheese said.
“We’ve been down the road of simply increasing the supply of skills without increasing UK productivity or the number of skilled jobs in the economy.
“We now need to improve skills utilisation and stimulate demand for higher level skills through increasing the number of higher skilled roles available.
“To do this, we need to encourage more employer investment in building productive working environments, with investment in skills growth and the management and leadership skills needed to deliver high performance workplaces, which are more likely to compete through innovation, continuous improvement and quality,” he continued.
“A Workplace Commission could fill this hole and help address the critical need to improve the utilisation of skills and productivity in the UK.”
The report, Industrial Strategy and the Future of UK Skills Policy, was produced for the CIPD by the Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance.
