If we doubted the news of a skills shortage across the UK, the boss of one of Britain’s most influential business organisations has now weighed in and called on the Government to take action.
The Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) says business in all sectors of the economy also has a part to play to keep the recovery going.
Tony Danker’s remarks come on the back of a raft of good news stories on the economy in terms of growth, increased job vacancies and a fall in unemployment. But this has been tempered by his warning that a labour shortage could last for up to two years, and he has called for ministers to act.
He said the country needed short-term fixes to spur recovery and long-term reforms to change our economic model.
These include:
- marrying skills policies to roles with the highest unfilled vacancies
- adding greater flexibility to the Apprenticeship Levy
- using the Government’s own skill-focused immigration levers to alleviate short-term pressures.
Mr Danker is also urging businesses to play their part on long-term productivity reforms by continuing to invest in training, automation and digital transformation, together with doing more to attract and retain staff from a diverse talent pool.
Outsourcing to deal with staff shortages is a common practice covering many areas, from IT to firms like G4 security and not least accountancy, where it is key. It could also be part of the wider economic solution.
A third-party company like the award-winning GI Outsourcing has the personnel, experience and hi-tech capability to cover any accountancy shortage or any upgrade to web-based accounting and migration of data.
From providing staff to cover for often run-of-the-mill compliance tasks, to helping set up and maintain web-based accounting systems, which can be accessed anywhere in the world, outsourcing is a smart and cost-effective option.
Sometimes it can take a while to convince potential clients of the benefits, but once on board, they embrace it enthusiastically.
After trying several providers, Carpenter Box settled on GI Outsourcing, beginning with an ad-hoc pay-as-you-go arrangement to manage bottlenecks.
Nathan Keeley, Partner and Head of Cloud Accounting at Carpenter Box explained: “We initially entered into outsourcing as a light touch when we were really busy. “We needed to get some extra support to either allow us to either recruit the right people or to service the clients better in terms of delivering within the deadline and the requirements they had.”
However, the firm quickly took the view that it could derive greater value from GI Outsourcing’s services by moving to a dedicated resource model (DRM) arrangement with one dedicated member of staff at GI.
“By moving to a DRM, you are effectively easing bottlenecks by taking on a new employee. While, of course, they aren’t formally an employee and are based in another country, that’s how I would view it,” says Nathan.
“Culturally, we want the look and feel of our DRM team to be part of our wider Carpenter Box team,” added Nathan.
In addition, these highly trained individuals offer other more detailed support and GI’s cloud-based technology expertise is also delivering for accountants.
There are literally hundreds of web-based apps on the market and GI has the nous and expertise to help implement, integrate and deliver systems while keeping abreast of the latest upgrades to the technology on behalf of the client.
Contact our UK-based team of account managers today to find out how we can help your firm
