Sector Skills Insights: Retail Introduction The UK

Transcript:Sector Skills Insights: Retail Introduction The UK:
Sector Skills Insights: Retail Introduction The UK Commission is working to transform the UK’s approach to investing in skills to help secure jobs and growth. Key to our ambition is the need to encourage greater employer ownership of skills, working to secure long term sustainable partnerships. This slide pack and accompanying evidence report present the case for more employers in this sector to invest in the skills of their people. It does so by presenting real-life, skill-based business solutions that have been used by leading employers to tackle the performance challenges they face and by drawing on examples of the investments being made by the UK Commission through its investment funds. There are several determinants of employers’ skills needs and training behaviour including firm size, strategy and location but it is by sector which the strongest variations appear. Hence this work focuses on the Retail sector. Slide packs and reports are also available for a number of other sectors from: www.ukces.org.uk Each of the sectors are important to the economy in terms of employment, productivity or their future potential. For information about this slide pack and accompanying report please contact: Zoey Breuer, zoey.breuer@ukces.org.uk Source information can be found in the notes section of each slide Storyboard What key skills challenges are being faced? Why retailing is important to the UK economy and labour market today The performance challenge: Attracting and retaining talented individuals The performance challenge: raising skills and investing in the workforce The performance challenge: Improving management quality 3 Growth through skills: Making best use of the existing training infrastructure Growth through skills: securing success through people management 3 Benefits to Business: Securing the future of the sector What key skills challenges are being faced overall? Increasing consumer affluence which has given the consumer wider access to a range of retailers especially so via the internet, made them increasingly demanding of customer service, and made them less loyal to particular retailers. The challenge to retailers is to provide a more enticing retail environment which will attract and retain customers. Whilst rising to these challenges is not solely a skills issue, skills are a vital element in improving the competitiveness of retailers. The sector is dependent upon customer service workers. Given the scale of employment in the sector, levels of labour turnover, and the projected growth in employment over the medium-term, the sector needs to attract a large number of