White Paper

The time we spend online is political. We may not think it so, but our engagement with the digital world is increasingly resembling a product that is stored, studied and sold. Our digital presences make up a mass that has come to be so valuable it is forcing entire political and economic structures to rewrite themselves. At the root of these changes are the major digital platform companies. Our extraordinary generosity needs to be set against the profitability of the work we do for the platform giants. Alphabet and Facebook alone reported £9 billion in UK sales in 2017, revenues on which they paid a total of £65 million in tax. Our first proposal, therefore, is to treat digital companies, for tax purposes, in the same way as conventional ones. Secondly, we seek to make an explicit connection between a reduced working week and our collective digital labour. By reframing the time, we spend online as labour, we intend to overcome the conceptual and cultural resistance to a 30-hour week. In simple terms, the working week would not be reduced, but merely altered to account for unrecognised labour, which would be rewarded to the benefit of millions of UK citizens.

This report examines recent changes in the logistics sector with special focus on technological change and the implications for future skills and training needs. Technological systems are considered to be a ‘competitive weapon’ for the logistics sector (Piplani et al, 2004). These systems can be any hardware or software that automates basic operational processes. However, to gain competitive edge from these technologies, expert knowledge or specialised skills are needed particularly IT skills and analytical skills. The research draws on an extensive literature review and analysis of the latest UK Employer Skills Survey (UKCES, 2014a), as well as drawing on the insights of employers and stakeholders through fifteen in-depth interviews and three focus groups to provide an assessment of the nature of the knowledge and skills needs required.

The 2013 survey represents the second edition in the combined UK series. It explores the skills challenges that employers face both within their existing workforces and in terms of bringing in new skilled labour, the levels and nature of training investment, recruitment of young people and education leavers and the relationship between skills challenges, training activity and business strategy. The study reports on the experiences of employers at the establishment level, rather than at the enterprise level. Sole traders and establishments with just one employee and no working proprietors were excluded from the survey population.

The Investment in Training survey is a follow-up survey to the Employer Skills Survey, looking more specifically at training that employers provide for their employees, and how much employers invest in this. This publication is a supplement to the Employer Skills Survey 2015 report, and presents training expenditure figures, by country, broken down into its constituent elements. It also tracks training expenditure figures over time, incorporating findings from the 2011 and 2013 Investment in Training surveys. It is worth noting that for the 2015 data, a new weighting strategy was implemented to improve the accuracy of the training spend estimates. This new weighting strategy was also retrospectively applied to both the 2011 and 2013 data files. Readers who are familiar with the Investment in Training 2011 and 2013 reports will therefore find that the historical figures presented here do not exactly match those previously presented. A technical annex contains a more detailed explanation of the revised weighting strategy, analysis of its effectiveness, and impact on training spend.

Since the UK Commission took over strategic ownership of the Investors in People Standard (IiP), a programme of evaluation has been developed to assess the impact of IiP and identify areas for improvement. This report is based on the findings of the first of a two-wave quantitative employer survey as part of this ongoing evaluation. Telephone interviews were conducted in August to October 2011 with 1,000 employers who had either been recognised with IiP for the first time or renewed their recognition in the 12 months prior to the fieldwork. The core objectives of the survey were to explore employers’ views and experiences of working towards IiP accreditation and the changes made to meet IiP Standard, as well as the support needed and received throughout the process. The study also measured the prominence and role of IiP within employers’ Human Resource (HR) and business strategies, the impact on these employers of working towards and gaining IiP accreditation and their overall satisfaction with IiP. The majority of employers interviewed were accredited before the new delivery arrangements (i.e. the regional IiP Centres introduced in April 2011) were put in place, therefore the survey can be seen as a baseline for future monitoring and evaluation. In the second wave of the survey the new recognitions from 2011-2012 will be compared against the new recognitions from this wave of the study to assess any changes which may have been brought about through the new delivery arrangements.

This report covers the findings from the second year of a two-year evaluation of Investors in People (IiP). The overall aim of this research is to provide a quantitative assessment, from the participating employer’s perspective, of the effectiveness of the IiP accreditation process and any impact associated with IiP recognition. The objectives of the project were to explore employers’ experiences and satisfaction of working towards IiP accreditation against their original expectations, the role that the IiP centres play in the accreditation process, the prominence and role of IiP within employers’ HR and business strategies and the impact on the employer of working towards and gaining IiP accreditation. The second year examined whether there are indications of changing levels of impact of IiP among recently recognised employers compared to a similar group of new recognitions from Year 1. This involved re-interviewing some employers interviewed at Year 1 to establish whether the benefits resulting from IiP recognition have been sustained or indeed increased, or whether instead they have faded with the passage of time. A total of 716 telephone interviews were conducted between 11th September 2012 and 2nd November 2012 among two distinct groups: 429 interviews with employers becoming recognised for the first time in the period July 2011 to June 2012 (‘Year 2 new recognitions’) From the 550 employers that were interviewed as new recognitions in the first year of the survey (so had been newly recognised in the period July 2010 to June 2011), 513 agreed to be re-contacted and 287 were re-interviewed.

Defining and Measuring Training Activity is a project which intends to improve the UK Commission and its partners’ understanding of our large-scale employer surveys, and to improve the quality of the surveys in the future. The UK Commission runs two large, biannual, UK-wide employer surveys: the Employer Skills Survey (ESS), which looks at employers’ skill needs, vacancies, recruitment and training regimes, and the Employer Perspectives Survey (EPS), which looks at employers’ interactions with and perceptions of a range of government business support. In both of these surveys, we ask employers about the training they do. But training can be thought of and categorised in a number of different ways: Who pays for it? Where does it happen? Who delivers it? This project asked a small number of employers in detail about their definitions of training, aiming to get to the bottom of how UK employers from a range of different groups think about training in their own businesses. We will use this information not only to improve the questions we use in the surveys in future, but also to help us report the information we have gathered in our current surveys with deeper, richer context.

Working Futures 2014-2024 is the latest in a series of quantitative assessments of the employment prospects in the UK labour market over a 10-year horizon. It presents historical trends and future prospects by sector for the UK and its constituent nations and the English regions. The prime focus of Working Futures is on the demand for skills as measured by employment by occupation and qualification, although the supply side is also considered. Its prime objective is to provide useful labour market information that can help to inform policy development and strategy around skills, careers and employment, for both policy makers and a much wider audience. The results are intended to provide a sound statistical foundation for reflection and debate among all those with an interest in the demand for and supply of skills. This includes individuals, employers, education and training providers, as well as the various agencies and departments of government. Sectoral change is one of the key drivers of the changing demand for skills. The main analysis focuses on broad sectors, but this is built up from a much more detailed picture of change by industry. The projections are based on the use of a multi-sectoral, regional macroeconomic model, combined with occupational, replacement demand and qualification modules. The results take account of the latest official data published by the Office for National Statistics. These data are used to paint a comprehensive and detailed picture of the changing face of the UK economy and labour market. A separate Technical Report (Wilson et al. 2016) provides full details of sources and methods used to produce the results, including information about even more detailed sub-national / sub-regional results. The future cannot be predicted with precision or certainty. But all the participants in the labour market make plans for the future. The rationale behind Working Futures is that a comprehensive, systematic, consistent and transparent set of projections can help to inform everyone about the world they are likely to face. It is important to emphasise that the view presented here is not the only possible future. It represents a benchmark for debate and reflection that can be used to inform policy development and other choices and decisions. The detailed projections present a carefully considered view of what the future might look like, assuming that past patterns of behaviour and performance are continued over the longer term. The results should be regarded as indicative of general trends and orders of magnitude and are not intended to be prescriptive. If policies and patterns of behaviour are changed then alternative futures can result.

This report is part of a series that provide a comprehensive review of the implications of technological change, changes in government policy and legislation, and changes in other economic and social drivers for the UK labour market. It presents a detailed analysis by industry and geography of the changing demand for labour. The projections are set into an historical context in order to compare the outlook for the next decade or so with recent experience. The report is provided by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills on behalf of its partners in the project (Learning and Skills Council (LSC), Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) and Regional Development Agencies). The report finds that despite the current crisis in both the world and the domestic economy, a more optimistic picture is projected for the labour market over the long term to 2017. Employment is projected to continue to rise over the decade as a whole, with the creation of 13.5 million job openings, of which two million will be new.