By Natasha Lomas, 2 June 2008 00:01
NEWS
The UK must do more to attract foreign skilled workers if homegrown high tech knowledge industries are to flourish in an era of increasing globalisation.
That's the warning from not-for-profit research organisation, The Work Foundation, which has called on politicians and policymakers to do more to address looming pressures in the labour market as demand for knowledge workers in sectors such as IT increases.
A new Work Foundation report, entitled Towards a Global Labour Market?, says soaring demand for highly skilled workers, along with existing skills shortages and the UK's ageing population, means businesses must look to source workers from abroad if Britain is to remain competitive.
It argues that the new points based immigration system will not be enough and says politicians must actively make the case for highly skilled migrants.
"Talented people want career opportunities, the chance to expand knowledge by working with the brightest and best, good salaries, and the creation of diverse and exciting cities," the report states.
The Work Foundation report also points out that availability of skilled workers can influence where companies choose to base themselves - especially those working at the cutting edge of R&D - and says a climate of hostility towards immigration in the UK could harm the high tech sector as foreign workers are discouraged from coming to Britain.
Report author, Katerina Rüdiger, said in a statement: "Global firms need more global people - not just to fill shortages but for the sake of enabling firms to innovate."
Earlier this year, research from IT industry skills body e-skills UK, claimed 140,000 IT & telecoms workers are likely to be needed each year to keep up with industry demand for staff.
The Work Foundation report notes that up-skilling native workers, while important, will not in itself be enough to power the UK's 'knowledge economy' - pointing out that employment in knowledge industries in the EU grew by 24 per cent between 1995 and 2004 while total employment growth in the region was just 1.1 per cent.
Competition for knowledge workers - especially in IT, science and technology - is therefore set to intensify.
Language skills, combined with international experience and outlook, will be increasingly important in the coming years, according to Rüdiger. "The UK needs to be seen, along with the US, Canada and Australia, as being among the most open and attractive places for highly skilled people to want to move," she added.
According to the report, the UK employs the third largest number of migrants with professional and technical skills (715,000) after the US and Canada. Indian nationals are the largest group of highly skilled migrant workers in the UK, with almost a quarter of skilled migrants admitted to the UK under the previous work permit regime being ICT professionals.
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Charles Smith
Here we go again. What they mean is bring in more speadsheet cheap people. Good skills cost money.
There are plenty of suitable people in the UK to provide IT skills. Their only problem is that they have grey hair or may need some training.
The corporate Boards of the UK companies decided to make IT unattractive as a career in the UK. These are the same people who can fix that problem. It is a simple process called loyalty.
2. Karen Challinor
so we started by bemoaning the lack of graduates, then went to preferentially importing immigrants with the right skills, then with extreme reluctance admitted that women might be able to do the job, completely ignored all the people over 40 with the required skills and now we've gone back to immigration again.
I could weep
the country doesn't make anything worth exporting any more, our tourism industry looks set to fail, we ignore and belittle the people who do have skills that might dig the country out of the mess it's in and our politicians and senior management, who got us into this state, are telling us that the easy times are over.
3. John Ray
I disagree. ICT immigration continues to be more about cost cutting rather than utilising indigenous skilled staff / re-training indigenous staff.
4. anonymous
Have worked at a high level in IT for the last 10 Years. Maybe if companies in the UK started paying decent wages for IT staff then they would not need to look for "cheaper" migrant workers. I went self employed myself many years ago due to the poor wages, companies need to realise that when they charge out Microsoft, cisco, novell engineers at £70-£100 per hour and then try to pay 17k a year what do they expect..
5. anonymous
Rubbish, we need more money and drive behind home grown skills and their education.
The big business drive to offshore has driven down 'coalface' real IT wages in the UK, and consequently has become a self-fulfilling prophecy leading to a recent rapid decline in numbers taking School and University IT courses.
6. Andrew Robb
It is a vicious circle - push costs down and the job is no longer attractive to young people choosing a career.
In the mean time, ageism is rife and excellent staff are being forced out into other careers or early retirement.
7. Richard
Different policies... which could really work:
How often we've heard about this supposed skills crisis over IT and technical staff; how often the “quick fixes” have made matters worse. But, people with valuable IT and technical skills continue to be treated very poorly by their employers and by the UK government. So, it is not surprising that youngsters choose other easier and more rewarding careers. I propose four policies which could really work.
1.Make the very best use of existing skilled staff:
Other “professionals” seem to expect to have support staff who do the lower level tasks. Strangely, very few IT or technical staff get any support. So, they have to waste their valuable time doing basic admin. and other tasks which could easily be off-loaded. Generally, “valuable” IT and technical staff also have much worse working conditions, pay and benefits than other “professionals.” None of this helps creativity, productivity, retention or recruitment.
2.Nurture existing skilled staff:
Existing staff should be helped and encouraged to maintain and update their skills. There should be proper careers, rather than routine “culling” at 35 or 40. Individuals and companies should not have to pay any taxes on training.
3.Help older skilled staff back into the profession:
There is a pool of older technical staff who, with minimal help and training, could fill many of these vacancies. Strangely, “our betters” don't seem interested in making this happen.
4. Restore flexibility:
The present government has made it increasingly difficult for skilled freelance workers to fill short term roles. Flexibility used to be a great strength of the UK economy, but has been lost through this “politics of envy.” The UK government should immediately repeal all restrictive legislation such as “IR35,” “S660” and “MSC” so that the remaining freelance professionals can help to overcome this “skills crisis”; so that they can spend time doing productive work for clients rather than worrying about ever changing and apparently vindictive assaults from government & HMRC.
8. Mike Richards
This is total rubbish! employers should start thinking about older applicants, many of whom are well qualified, but cannot obtain work, I am in my early 60's, am well qualified, (inluding 4 MCP's obtained in the last 3 months), but I do not even get the courtesy of an acknowledgement when I apply for a job online.I have to date applied for over 800 jobs in the last 3 years, without a single reply! I wonder how many others are in the same position?