COMPANIES should not lay the blame for skills shortages in their workforces at the Government’s door and anyone who does is “hiding behind their incompetence”, according to two of Scotland’s most prominent business leaders.
Entrepreneurs Lord Willie Haughey and Sir Tom Hunter, speaking on the Go Radio Business Show with Hunter & Haughey yesterday, agreed that businesses should be coming up with solutions to address their own skills shortages – not relying on the Scottish Government to solve the problem for them.
Responding to a report from the Institute of Directors in Scotland that revealed nearly half of Scottish business leaders have highlighted skills shortages in their workforces, Sir Tom Hunter, founder of The Hunter Foundation, said: “People expect too much from the Government – the Government can’t do everything.
"The skills shortage is the companies’ issue.”
Labour peer Lord Willie agreed: “Anyone who blames the Government for the skills shortage is hiding behind their own incompetence – the Government is not responsible for skills shortages.
"Companies … we should be responsible for our own training, we should be responsible for our own apprenticeship schemes.”
He did, however, criticise the Government for a shortfall of 146,000 college places over the last 10 years. “I put that right at the Government’s door,” Lord Willie added.
“But to say that what is happening today is the Government’s fault is a bit of a cop-out. We have to do out bit.”
According to IoD Scotland’s “state of the nation” survey, 79 per cent of respondents believe the primary role of the Scottish Government is to ensure the “efficient delivery of public services, ensuring [a] skilled workforce and effective regulation of the market”.
In addition, around 44% of directors in Scotland do not believe they have the right number of skilled people for the current jobs in their organisations.
Furthermore, 35% of respondents to the survey do not feel confident they can recruit people with the right skills this year.
Asked by show host Donald Martin, editor of The Herald and The Herald on Sunday, how serious the issue is and how quickly it can be addressed, Lord Willie said: “I just don’t understand what’s happening in the jobs market just now. We’re told there are 275,000 more people working but everywhere I look there are vacancies.
"The skills shortage in some sectors is frightening.”
He also expressed concern about future shortages in the NHS as people “look at other avenues after what they have gone through over the last two years”.
"The skills shortage across all sectors is frightening," he said, "but what is frightening too is when we are out of all of this there are going to be huge shortages in the NHS."
Both Lord Willie and Sir Tom also highlighted the well-publicised staff shortages in the hospitality sector with businesses struggling to recruit chefs in particular.
Sir Tom noted: “I was at a board meeting and the number one priority is the recruitment of chefs. This company pays top wages – it is a very go-ahead company.”
Accepting that Brexit had exacerbated the situation and “caused a lot of skilled people to leave Britain”, he said: “British business has not been growing its own and we need to go back to growing our own to solve this skills shortage.
"It is not a Government issue – it is for business people to solve that.”
Along with guests from the Scottish business community, The Go Radio Business Show features business advice and insight from Sir Tom Hunter and Lord Willie Haughey at 11am on Sundays.
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