UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011: Northern Ireland results

Evidence Report : UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011- Northern Ireland National Report (PDF, 2.0 Mb) 

Executive Summary (PDF, 700 Kb) 

Published October 2012

This report looks at results for Northern Ireland in detail; we break our results down by region, industrial sector, occupation, and size of establishment. The results are presented to be comparable with the Northern Ireland Skills Monitoring Survey (NISMS) series. In Northern Ireland, over 4,000 employers were interviewed on a wide range of issues including investment in training and staff development, vacancies and skills shortages, and gaps in employees’ skills.

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;

Findings from the report show that in Northern Ireland:

• The proportion of establishments recruiting new staff has fallen, but the number of vacancies available per employee has risen. So although fewer employers are taking on new staff, of those that are they are doing so in greater numbers
• The smallest establishments (with less than five employees), establishments in the Business Services sector, those located in Belfast or the Northern region, and those employing Professionals, Skilled Trade occupations, and Machine Operatives were the most likely to report vacancies.
• Although only a small minority of businesses reported vacancies unfilled because of skill shortages, nearly all business with a skills shortage (90%) found it had an impact on the operation of the business. The survey also finds concentrations of these skills shortages in particular industries and occupations (such as Skilled Trade occupations, Professional occupations, and the Hotel and Restaurant and Business Services sectors)
• Overall, the proportion of all vacancies which are skill shortage vacancies has increased over time;
• Over 37 thousand employees did not have the skills required to perform their job role. Looking back at previous surveys in Northern Ireland, there are persistent pockets of concentration of these skills gaps (Hotels and Restaurants and Wholesale and Retail sectors, Elementary and Sales and Customer Service occupations);
• Three-fifths of establishments in Northern Ireland (63 per cent) provided some form of training for their staff in the previous year, a decline on the 74 per cent reported in 2008. As in previous years, training rates varied significantly between occupations and size of employer, those employed in low skilled occupations, those employed in small businesses and those who work in specific sectors (such as Agriculture and Construction) receive the least training.
• Some groups of employers face multiple skills issues; these may impede their economic recovery in the future. Northern Ireland’s smallest employers for example are the most likely to have a vacancy proving hard to fill due to a lack of skilled applicants, but are also least likely to train their existing staff. The Hotel and Restaurant sector is not only struggling with a high proportion of its vacancies being skills shortage vacancies, but was also the sector with the highest proportion of staff with a skills gap.
  

Download : XML data file (XML, 1.2 Mb) 

• Print this page
•