SkillsActive is the Sector Skills Council for Active Leisure, Learning and Well-being, comprising Sport and Recreation, Health and Fitness, Playwork, The Outdoors and Caravans. The sector makes a significant contribution to the Welsh economy through successful leisure, to the health of the nation and to social equality through community sport and play initiatives. This paper describes the current and future skills priorities for the sector. It draws on a range of government sources and recent research undertaken by SkillsActive and its sector partners. It explains actions being taken by SkillsActive to address these priorities and identifies areas in which further support from government and/or industry would be beneficial.

As the world has flattened, some forms of services have become easily traded across geographies, cultures, and cost structures. Many countries—most notably India and the Philippines—have accelerated their economic growth through thriving information technology (IT) and business process services exports.

To understand the shifting economics of global manufacturing, The Boston Consulting Group analyzed manufacturing costs for the world’s 25 leading exporting economies along four key dimensions: manufacturing wages, labor productivity, energy costs, and exchange rates. These 25 economies account for nearly 90 percent of global exports of manufactured goods.

In recent years, the rise of so-called collaborative technologies has led to many changes in work organization. In the construction sector, this trend is manifested by the significant increase in the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan (Chaudet et al, 2016. McGraw Hill Construction, 2014).  Seeing this issue on the horizon, CEGEPs Old Montreal and Limoilou anticipated in 2013, the emergence of training needs related to BIM. They contacted The Associated General Contractor of America (AGC), one sector of the most important associations of the construction in the United States and agreed with them to become the official broadcasters of their BIM training in the Francophonie. After a work of adaptation and translation of training and a huge operation and information dissemination to stakeholders in the construction industry, the PeBIM program was launched in January 2015. The CEGEPs have further recognize the fact program SOFEDUC and the CanBIM Professional, Canadian certification body BIM. Since the École de technologie supérieure (ETS) joined the colleges for the dissemination of the program and the movement continued, CEGEPs have developed a set of specialized training in BIM.  BIM interested Observatory for two reasons. First, it seems to infuse new forms of collaboration between educational institutions and industry players. Second, these reports tend to redefine the training design process. According Leesa Hodgson and Simon Brodeur, respectively director and academic adviser to the direction of continuing education and businesses Cégep du Vieux-Montreal, BIM has a "collaborative" effect. We return here on this and reflect on its scope on the issue of training and employment. [googletranslate_en]

This Evidence Review explores the challenges facing the retirement income market over the next few decades, focusing particularly on how people might convert pension savings into income and exploring the characteristics of people reaching state pension age (SPA) in 2025 and 2040. For people reaching SPA in 2025 and 2040, increases in life expectancy will result in people living longer, and resulting policy changes mean that they will be accessing state and private pensions later. Some people might need to work longer than previous generations, and some may have longer retirements to support, although longer, healthy life expectancies might allow people to work for longer than previous generations.

This Evidence Report presents the Key Findings from the National Employer Skills Survey for England 2009 (NESS09), the newest edition of a series of surveys that was established by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in 2003. It covers the incidence, extent and nature of skills problems facing employers, in terms of skill-shortage vacancies, skills gaps and the likelihood that employees will need upskilling. It examines employer training activity and training spend, as well as employer product market strategies. The context of recession, in which the fieldwork for this project was carried out, is reflected in analysis of questions asking employers how they were impacted by the economic downturn. Analysis is carried out by size of organisation; sector, defined by both Standard Industrial Classification and Sector Skills Council footprint; and English region.

The aim of the National Employer Skills Survey is to provide robust and reliable information from employers in England on skills deficiencies and workforce development activities to serve as a common basis to develop policy and assess the impact of skills initiatives. The survey includes employers across all sectors of business activity in England. ‘Employers’ are defined as establishments (individual sites) rather than enterprises.

This report presents findings from the 2014 UK Commission Employer Perspectives Survey (EPS), the third biennial survey in this series. It provides insight into the thoughts and behaviour of over 18,000 employers across the UK as they make decisions about how to engage with training providers, schools, colleges and individuals in the wider skills system, to get the skills they need. Key areas covered in this report include training; work experience; collaboration with schools, colleges and universities; Apprenticeships and recruitment, including of young and old people. The EPS is carried out in alternate years with the Employer Skills Survey series (ESS), which is the definitive source of intelligence on employer skills needs in the UK. The two survey series have been designed to complement each other in providing a clear picture of the skills challenges faced by employers across the UK.

This report presents the findings of the UK Commission’s Employer Perspectives Survey 2012 (UKCEPS 2012), the second in a series of biennial, large scale surveys of employers designed to provide a UK-wide picture of employer perspectives of, and experiences in, the recruitment and skills landscape.