UK businesses have the most concern about Brexit, cashflow issues and their employees’ skills gaps, according to new research from leading learning provider Litmos Heroes.
The study of 500 UK firms finds almost a third (32 per cent) highlighted Britain’s protracted exit from the EU as their biggest ongoing worry.
Cashflow came second in the list and was the most troubling topic for 18 per cent of respondents, while 17 per cent cited the lack of skills among their own staff as their most pressing problem.
But the study found that thousands of businesses are doing little or nothing to combat that employee skills gap, with almost one in ten (8 per cent) admitting they don’t offer any digital training at all to staff.
The digital transformation of the business (14 per cent), cyber-crime (8 per cent) and retaining employees (7 per cent) were also flagged as being of concern in the study, which was carried out to support the launch of Litmos Heroes’ new Cybersecurity course collection.
Tom Moore, managing director of Litmos Heroes, says, ‘Brexit has been making plenty of headlines of late and even though progress has been made, the uncertainty surrounding our exit from the EU at the moment is clearly an issue that’s leaving business owners very concerned.
‘We know that businesses do not like uncertainty and despite the March 2019 date being set by Theresa May, this is a topic that shows no sign of being cleared up any time soon.
‘Cashflow, employee skills gap and digital transformation were also highlighted as serious ongoing concerns for businesses and that’s why we have put together a number of courses to give key decision makers the confidence to tackle these issues in 2018.’
The Litmos Heroes study also discovers what businesses are doing to tackle the employee skills gap. Almost one in ten (8 per cent) admitted they don’t offer any digital training at all to staff while 20 per cent said they only offer training on regulatory areas.
Just under half of those asked said their firm offers digital training on regulatory and on-the-job areas only while 28 per cent say they train their staff on all areas, including soft skills.
‘It’s slightly worrying to see that so many businesses offer no digital training for their staff, especially when you consider that almost half of the respondents in our study said they prefer to learn through videos or online training,’ Tom adds.
‘There’s a huge emphasis on increasing productivity in the UK at the moment and ensuring that staff are fully trained is one way businesses can really tackle the problem. Better training empowers organisations and employees, so we’d urge the business community to take note of these findings and re-evaluate their staff training programmes.’
Further reading on business leader concern
