An urgent overhaul of training is required to address the serious skills gaps that are “crippling” many parts of the economy, the TUC has warned.
TUC research reveals that a third of businesses do not offer any training to their staff and more than a third of the workforce received no training at all last year.
The research, based on a number of reports on skills including those from the London School of Economics, the Work Foundation and the Department for Education and Skills, shows that those least likely to get training work in semi-skilled and manual jobs. More than half of the UK’s employers offered some form of training to their professional staff in the past year, but less than half made the same offer to staff in manual jobs.
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TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “This report shows that if businesses really want value for money from their training then they must find out what their staff need.
“Token-gesture training for the masses and expensive training for the elite will not address the real problems of workers unable to keep up with the fast-changing world of business,” he said.
