How do The Financial Services Skills Commission tackle the UK skills’ challenge? The corporate conundrum 

Forecasting our future skills needs can be challenging, but it is essential to increase the supply of talent across our sector, tackle existing skills gaps and promote a more diverse and inclusive workforce. Our industry is currently facing acute difficulties in securing the required skills it needs to remain competitive. We currently have over 50,000 vacancies in financial services, meaning that for every 100 jobs, there are now roughly five unfilled roles. This is the highest ever vacancy rate on record for our sector and the third highest of any sector (1), (only the Hospitality and Health sectors have higher vacancy ratios) and these skills shortages are adversely affecting UK growth and productivity. This deficit is also increasing many organisations’ operating costs and staff workload.  So, failure to invest in skills now risks slower growth in the future and the UK falling behind its global competitors.

The sector is working hard to develop the required skills to remain competitive. 

The Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC) has identified the priority skills for the sector in a Future Skills Framework, launched in October 2021. This has expanded over the last 12 months through cross-industry collaboration with NatWest, Direct Line Group, Zurich Insurance, Danske Bank, and Barclays to include a total of 13 technical and behavioural skills, including creative thinking and data analytics & insights. The Framework is designed to support firms to prioritise their upskilling and reskilling efforts. Seventy-five percent of our members are using the Framework to focus attention on training and investment and to embed a skills-based approach to recruitment and promotion. Sixty percent of our members who are using the Framework have reported a reduced need to recruit, saving both time and valuable resource.

The Framework closely aligns with our newly published Skills Gap Analysis Toolkit, created in partnership with Lloyds Banking Group, to help firms improve their capacity to identify future skills for the long term and to support ongoing skills forecasting. Our data shows that 20% of firms do not currently collect data on future skills and 76% do not hold data on the proficiency levels required for future skills. This restricts a firm’s ability to develop a strategy on upskilling and reskilling their workforce. Put simply, you can’t train effectively if you don’t know what skills you need.

The Skills Gap Analysis Toolkit has been built using best practice from our member firms, providing a common approach for organisations to adopt alongside their existing workforce planning guidelines. The Toolkit consists of three tailored workshops which can be delivered by in-house HR teams and provides detailed materials to enable firms to pinpoint areas where there are skills deficits so they can act accordingly. This allows firms to prioritise strategic skills planning, understand how individuals can be upskilled, as well as the time and cost demands that accompany this. A skills action plan is also included in the Toolkit content to capture data for forecasting and planning purposes.

The Toolkit and Future Skills Framework enable organisations to build and further develop skills forecasting capabilities. For firms who have not yet started skills forecasting, templates are readily available to kickstart their own skills analysis journey. It’s imperative that skills forecasting becomes a boardroom priority if our sector is to continue to attract and retain talent, boost productivity and drive innovation.

The FSSC Toolkit is available here and The Future Skills Framework is available here. The FSSC is currently running a series of workshops to showcase the Toolkit. If you would like to find out more, please contact info@financialservicesskills.org

Claire Tunley, CEO, Financial Services Skills Commission

[1] ONS, Vacancies by industry data for April – June 2022