Despite the continuing skills shortage, 86% of European employers have frozen or reduced their investments in employee training in the last 12 months, according to a study by Accenture for the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB) for the European Business Summit 2012.
The Turning the Tide: How Europe Can Rebuild Skills and Generate Growth study involved 500 senior executives of European companies. It showed that only about 18% of these companies planed to increase investments in employee skills development in the next year. 43% of the surveyed companies faced at least a moderate lack of skills. 72% of the respondents believed that investing in employee skills development should be increased but were not able to find a solution.
The Accenture study analyzes three major challenges of European skills markets that can be addressed through deeper insight and better cooperation:
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Employers do not use enough the skills of the 25 million unemployed people in Europe and the other 15 million people who had to leave workforce due to lack of opportunities, including the elderly, mothers and the youngest generations. They view these different groups as one homogeneous group, which excludes them from accessing wider range of skills.
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Only 28% of companies use the skills available on the whole European market. Cross-border mobility is, however, not the only problem - many employers are unable to remove their own internal barriers to effectively measure skills.
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Although two thirds of respondents agree that the lack of skills in Europe should be addressed through collaboration of more stakeholders, only 29% cooperate with other organizations in their sector and only 18% with organizations in other sectors.
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