Employer surveys
The UK Commission conducts two major employer surveys on a biennial basis, the UK Employer Skills Survey and the UK Employer Perspectives Survey. These surveys run in alternate years.
UK Employer Skills Survey
The UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011 has now published UK Results, looking in detail at findings across the whole of the UK and breaking down results by UK nation, sector, occupation, and size of establishment. For more information please see the UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey page
The UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011 is the first UK-wide employer skills survey and one of the largest surveys of its kind in the world with over 87,500 employers taking part. The survey looks at training and staff development, vacancies unfilled because of skills shortages, gaps in employees’ skills, recruitment of education leavers, and a host of other measures to provide a comprehensive and robust picture of skills needs and training investment in UK business.
In addition, there are four nation reports which cover trends through time in each of the respective nations. The reports for England, Northern Ireland and Wales have been published, with the Scotland report due to be published in December this year.
The results provide a comprehensive source of data for users:
- Employers can identify how they compare to their sector in their provision of training or own experience of skill deficiency and identify key challenges and opportunities for their sector;
- Individuals and careers advisers can identify sectors and occupations experiencing particular shortages;
Providers of training and development can use the results to help shape provision to need in their locality or their specialist areas;
The size of the survey enables particularly detailed geographical analysis, for example, by Local Enterprise Partnership and Local Education Authority in England. On the 4th of July we held an event, hosted by our Commissioner Neil McLean, Chair of Leeds City LEP, in Central London to introduce the local data we have available in depth, as well as discuss the key messages coming out of the survey. Presentations from this event can be found here: http://www.ukces.org.uk/ourwork/research/knowledge-exchange
The UK Commission’s Employer Perspectives Survey (UKCEPS)
The UK Commission’s Employer Perspectives Survey (UKCEPS) provides a UK-wide picture of how employers are meeting their skills needs, looking both at their engagement with skills and employment services and their broader approaches to people development.
In particular the survey examines: approaches to recruitment; awareness and use of skills support services/initiatives; engagement with external training providers; and the use of vocational qualifications and apprenticeships. The survey also covers specific areas of policy interest, and in the latest survey (carried out in 2012) this includes questions on the use of work placements and the recruitment of young people.
The UKCEPS 2012
The UKCEPS 2012 gathered the views of 15,000 employers across the UK. The findings from this survey were published as an evidence report in December 2012.
The full set of data tables (XML, 12.4 Mb) is available for download.
A set of regional data tables (XML, 2.3 Mb) breaking down the data by English region is also available for download .
The UKCEPS 2012 technical report (PDF, 724 Kb) , and the questionnaire (DOCX, 104 Kb) are also available to download.
If you would like access to the full SPSS dataset from UKCEPS 2012, this will be available shortly via the UK Data Archive: http://data-archive.ac.uk/
Previous Versions of the Survey
The first UKCEPS was published in 2010. The evidence report for the 2010 survey and the 2010 questionnaire (DOCX, 125 Kb) can also be downloaded.
The full SPSS dataset from the UKCEPS 2010 will also be available shortly on the UK data archive.
An earlier version of the survey was carried out in 2008, and reported in the UK Commission’s first evidence report: Skills for the Workplace: Employer Perspectives
