Skills for Success: Developing a Future Workforce to Power Economic Growth

As a sector, manufacturing is renowned for its high-skill, high-wage employment, offering wages significantly higher than the national average, and giving people from all backgrounds the chance to achieve their potential. Despite this, the sector is facing a significant skills and labour shortage which threatens to undermine economic growth and the UK’s Industrial Strategy. The skills shortage is now a critical issue for many companies in the sector, not just affecting their growth, but their ability to maintain daily operations and fulfil contracts.

This is why last year Make UK launched its Industrial Strategy Skills Commission which was tasked with finding a solution to the growing skills deficit in manufacturing and engineering across the country and bringing together some of the most qualified experts in education, training and industry to diagnose the wide scale problems in the skills system.

Published in April, the final report of the Commission seeks to identify key priorities that Government must address to support vital skills creation, while highlighting emerging issues so industry and Government can respond effectively. This event will be an excellent opportunity to look in more depth at the Commission’s recommendations and to consider following the publication of the industrial strategy what has been addressed in the last six months and where we can still go further.