This report has been written in order to show how successfully the company - 'Boots' is in running its human resources department in order to meet its business objectives.
Introduction
This report has been written in order to show how successfully the company - 'Boots' is in running its human resources department in order to meet its business objectives. The report has been divided into four parts to ensure a comprehensive coverage of Boots has been researched and also to give the report a main structure of the human resources departments. Part 2 will be discussed in depth.
Part 1 = Planning
Part 2 = Recruitment & Selection
Part 3 = Training & Development
Part 4 = Performance Management
This unit provides an insight into how businesses recruit and manage their human resources. It shows that if businesses are to achieve their objectives, they must plan their human resource function so that they have the right number of employees with the appropriate qualifications and training to meet the needs of the business.
Successful human resource management requires that a business takes account of changes in the labour market and employment legislation to keep its employees motivated, to monitor their performance and to help them continuously develop through additional training.
What is Human Resource Management?
Human resource management includes a variety of activities. There are many key factors for any large organisation to focus on such as the following:
? What staffing needs to have and whether to use independent contractors or hire employees to fill these needs
? Recruiting and training the best employees, ensuring they are high performers
? Dealing with performance issues and ensuring its personnel and management practices conform to various regulations.
For the organisation activities also include managing its approach to employee benefits and compensation, employee records and personnel policies. Usually new business owners have to carry out these activities themselves because they can't yet afford part or full-time help. However, they should always ensure that employees have and are aware of personnel policies, which conform to current regulations. These policies are often in the form employee manuals, which all employees have.
Staff are a major resource in any business. This is particularly true in a business like Boots, which has a very large amount of employees and which provides a range of services to its customers.
Managing human resources effectively is vital to Boots for several reasons:
? The business needs to employ the right number of staff. If it has too many employees it is not cost effective and if it has too few then it will not be able to carry out all of its work
? The business needs to have a stable workforce. It is costly and inefficient if there is a high labour turnover of staff
? The business needs to recruit the most appropriate staff for vacancies
? The business must make sure its staff are properly trained in order to carry out their work in the most effective way
? The business has to abide by laws and regulations concerning its staff or it could face prosecution or difficulties later
? Motivated staff work better than demotivated staff
? Pay levels should be appropriate. Paying too much is costly, but paying below the minimum wage is demotivating.
Who is responsible for Human Resource Management?
In Boots each manager takes it upon themselves to contribute to the overall responsibility of the way the Human Resources is managed. In many ways it is upto a department that is known as the personnel, which ensures the employees of Boots are well trained and motivated enough to carry out each task as efficiently as possible.
There are a number of problems Boots may face when planning how to use its personnel:
? Problems with predicting the behaviour of people. Boots may have filled a position, but after being appointed the individual may decide he/she does not want the job. This could mean another costly and time-consuming series of interviews for the company.
? Problems with predicting external events. Sometimes it is difficult to predict exactly how many employees are required. For example, the opening up of the former communist countries to trade from the West in the early 1990s would have meant changing plans for businesses aiming to break into these markets. It is likely that employees with knowledge of the business and language of these countries would have been in demand.
? Planning has to be constantly monitored. It is unwise for Boots to plan its human resource needs and not alter them in the light of changing events. Planning has to be checked, revised and updated as other factors change.
? Human resource planning must be well thought out or it is likely to lead to industrial relations problems. Cuts in the workforce or wage reductions that are not negotiated could, as mentioned earlier, affect employees' motivation and could lead to industrial action.
Human Resource Planning
Boots have to plan carefully to ensure they have the right number of suitable employees for their needs. To do this they need a good understanding of the labour market in the areas where the company's branches operate. Boots consider the effects of the following labour market factors for their human resources planning:
? Local employment trends
? Local skills shortages
? Competition for employees
? Availability of labour.
Human resources planning also involves looking at how labour is organised within Boots. Boots take account of a range of factors when making decisions about their internal staffing. The factors include:
? Labour turnover (stability index wastage rate)
? Sickness and accident rates
? Age, skills and training
? Succession.
The stages in the Human Resources Planning process
SUPPLY SIDE DEMAND SIDE
MATCHING DEMAND AND SUPPLY
Analysis of current human resources within the organisation
Analysis of future plans/strategies of the organisation and the effect on human resource
Success of information
Personnel records, numbers employed, grade/level, age, length of service, qualifications/competences, appraisal information, continuing professional development record
Success of information
Corporate business plan, implementation plans, estimates of future activity levels
Plan of future availability of staff
Projection of human resource levels required in the future
Examination of how these two projections match up
Forecast of human resource surplus/deficit
Examination of alternative policies to meet identified human resource match up
Recruitment, training/professional development of current staff, transfer, termination
Identification of the HRM plan, selection of the best policy and an indication of how it should be implemented
Demand side
Boots' demand for labour will depend on the plans the company has for the future, in particular the big plans, what many businesses refer to as 'strategic plans'. For example, a company may decide to increase its market share quickly and to do this it must review its competition. It may find that to be as good if not better than its competitors it could open a great deal more branches around the UK. This expansion would be the company's strategic plan. In order to support this expansion the company would need to recruit many more employees.
Forecasting the demand for human resources
Boots's demand for human resources must be estimated by analysing its future plans and by estimating the levels of activity within the business.
There are two main ways of forecasting demand:
Management estimates
Managers of any business may be asked to forecast their staff requirements. They will do this on the basis of past, present and likely future requirements.
Work-study techniques
Over the years much work has gone into work-study. Work-study specialists work out how long various jobs take using available machinery and equipment. Provided they ...
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Forecasting the demand for human resources
Boots's demand for human resources must be estimated by analysing its future plans and by estimating the levels of activity within the business.
There are two main ways of forecasting demand:
Management estimates
Managers of any business may be asked to forecast their staff requirements. They will do this on the basis of past, present and likely future requirements.
Work-study techniques
Over the years much work has gone into work-study. Work-study specialists work out how long various jobs take using available machinery and equipment. Provided they know what output/sales are likely to be, they can calculate the numbers of employees required and the hours they will need to work.
Supply side
If Boots is to work out the supply of labour available the company must examine the numbers of people available to work, how long they can work for, their ability to do the required jobs, their productivity (output per head) and other factors.
The supply of labour is made up of two sources: internal and external.
Internal Supply
Before Boots decide to recruit any employees externally it needs to consider whether it has the suitable candidates internally who could do the job efficiently. By doing this Boots are saving money and recruiting internally takes less time than recruiting externally. However, if the job on offer is highly specialised then it is unlikely that there are any suitable candidates that match the criteria. The personnel can do this by sifting through employees' documentation that may contain past experience, skills gained before joining the company and appraisal reports.
Boots is one of many companies that ask employees to complete a 'skills questionnaire' to see whether they possess the required skills to take up a vacant job. A skills questionnaire may also be of help to the Human Resource Department to identify possible mentors and to plan training events if skills shortages are identified. This information is of use to the Human Resource Department when deciding whether to advertise internally. (Unfortunately it was not possible to gain a skills questionnaire from Boots).
Statistics and information would be collected on employees already within Boots, which would cover the following areas:
? The number of employees in particular job categories
? The skills available
? Skills analysis
? Performance results
? Promotion potential
? Age distribution and length of service
? Staff turnover
The number of employees in particular job categories
This figure will give a broad overview of the numbers in Boots who already possess certain broad category skills - e.g. in a Premier division football team this could be the number of strikers, midfielders, defenders goalkeepers etc. Or it could identify those who already have Premier division experience and those who are novices at that level.
The skills available
It may be helpful to identify the current skills held by the labour force and see how many of these are transferable (a skill used in one particular job may be transferable to another job).
Skills analysis
Boots needs to be sure it has the right number of people available at the right time but also with the right skills. The company, therefore, needs to assess its present supply of skills across the company's workforces and to identify the sorts of skills it will require in the future.
A skills inventory of current employees will indicate those who have received recent training and those who will require training. It may be possible to meet the human resource requirements of the organisation by training and developing current staff rather than recruiting externally. (This is often a cheaper option and also helps to motivate people who are already working for the company).
Performance results
Boots will want to gather information about the level of performance of various categories of current employees. This sort of information may be collected in a quantitative form (e.g. numbers of items produced of acceptable quality, number of rejected items because of poor quality etc). In addition information may be collected that is of qualitative nature (e.g. information from appraisal interviews).
Promotion potential
Internal promotions will change the availability of existing resources. It is useful to know how many employees have the skills and aptitude for promotion to more demanding roles. In addition, it is useful to know how many employees have the potential, with suitable training, for promotion.
Age distribution and length of service
This is a very important factor to any large or medium sized business because it is possible to have too many experienced workers and too many inexperienced workers within an organisation.
If Boots has too many experienced workers there is a danger that they will retire at similar times leaving the organisation in a mess to sort out by recruiting more staff with no experience. It is therefore important for Boots to have a workforce of mixed ages so that the danger of experienced workers retiring at the same time is avoided. If the organisation has too many inexperienced workers it may show a slow progress of advancement in the business objectives which may influence employees to quit their job and look somewhere else offering them more job satisfaction.
Staff turnover. Staff turnover should be analysed in order to identify the reasons people leave Boots and to help it forecast future losses. A degree of staff turnover may be beneficial to the organsation, as fresh staff can be recruited, promotion channels may be opened up and it may allow for natural wastage when Boots is trying to reduce its workforce. Too high a level of staff turnover will mean that there will be high additional costs of staff replacement and recruitment, additional training costs and disruption to the quality of service or to production.
If Boots found that there was nobody suitable for the job of an Office supervisor within the organisation then it would need to consider the possibility of finding one within its locality. In this case because the report is on Boots of Derry the HRD would study local labour market information of N Ireland.
Techniques for forecasting internal employee supply: labour turnover
There are two simple methods of measuring the rate at which employees leave or stay with an organisation, which are:
?Employee wastage rate
? Labour stability rate
Employee wastage rate - Below shows a simple formula indicating how it is possible to calculate the number of staff leaving a business as a percentage of those who could have left:
Number of staff leaving in time period / Average number of staff employed in time period
Wastage rate = X 100
Unfortunately, information was unable to be found for a realistic wastage rate in Boots so an example is shown below:
If Boots were to employ a photo-developing workforce of 400 in the North of England but found that 100 of them left during the year, the wastage rate would be:
00 / 400
X 100 = 25%
Such information is used to predict likely turnover in the future, to see if there is a need to examine in detail the reasons for the high turnover and to find out if there is need to recruit new staff to replace those leaving.
Even though the labour turnover index is very useful to the organisation it also (as with most statistics) needs to be considered alongside other factors such as whether employees are leaving one particular department of the organisation.
Labour stability rate - Some organisations make good use of the labour stability index as well as the wastage rate. This indicates to the organisation the tendency for employees with long service to stay with the company therefore linking the leaving rate with the length of service.
Number of staff leaving with more than 1 year's service / Number employed 1 year ago
Stability index = X 100
The advantage of knowing about the current labour force of an organisation enables it to make the most of the skill and potential present within. But on the other hand, the availability of those from the local and national labour market statistics also has to be taken into consideration.
The effectiveness of employee organisation
The effectiveness with which Boots or any other organisation runs its human resource policies can be measured by the level of employee satisfaction, and this is where stability indexes and, again, wastage rates are so important. If employees of Boots are content with their work, they are most likely to turn up for work. Levels of stress and stress related absenteeism increase when there is poor human relations atmosphere.
Sickness and accident rates
It is most likely that Boots keep a record of the following:
? Notified absences. When employers are going to be absent from work (e.g. to attend a funeral, a hospital appointment, a wedding etc).
? Absences due to sickness. Employees will need to produce a doctor's note so that they are entitled to sickness benefits, etc.
? Unauthorised absences. When employees simply do not turn up for work, without telling anyone.
As a result of these records, Boots can record absences as a percentage of the hours/days etc, that could possibly have been worked. Absence records can be kept for individual employees, groups of employees and the workforce as a whole at Boots.
Such detailed statistical analysis enables Boots to keep an eye on where problems lie - with an individual, with a particular section of workers or with Boots as a whole. Comparisons can then be made with other workers and past records (for the individual employee), with other teams/sections (for teams/sections) in the workplace and with comparable organisations. Breaking down the statistics further highlights whether the problem lies with sickness or with unauthorised absence. And by keeping these records for a number of years, it is possible to establish trends.
Absences should be measured as a percentage of total time. For example, if an employee from Boots is due to work for 40 hours in the week, but turns up for work for 32 hours only, then his/her absence level is:
8 / 40
X 100 = 20%
Accident rates are calculated by recording the number of accidents at work. Boots should have a health and safety committee with the responsibility to:
? Investigate and report on accidents or incidents.
? Examine national health and safety reports and statistics
? Review health and safety audit reports
? Draw up works rules and instructions
? Oversee health and safety training
? Promote and advise on relevant publicity campaigns
? Recommend updates to Boots' safety policy
? Consider and advise on impending legislation.
Part of the health and safety committee's responsibilities will be to ensure accurate records are kept of accidents at work.
The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1985 (RIDDOR) set out that injuries resulting from accidents at work where an employee is incapacitated for three or more days must be reported to the authorities within seven days. Injuries involving fatalities must be notified immediately by the most practical means (e.g. by phone). Listed diseases must also be notified.
Boots, therefore, will keep statistics on both minor accidents at work (i.e. ones however minor that involve some form of first aid) and accidents that have to be reported to the authorities under RIDDOR. Accident statistics relating to particular industries and organisations can then be collected nationally. In addition, Boots and other organisations will want to keep internal statistics to make sure that undesirable trends do not occur. In the course of time Boots will want to see accident rates falling.
Accident rates can be calculated simply as a number of accidents per year within a chosen unit (team, firm, industry etc). In calculating accident rates in a particular industry or firm, the most accurate method is to calculate the statistics according to each employee working in the industry. This is because some industries employ far more people than others and because the numbers employed change over time.
Statistics for age, skills and training
As earlier explained in the report, Boots will have a range of employees who have worked for different lengths of time and who have different levels of skills and training. The human resource planner will seek to have a balance of new people entering Boots in order to cover those who are leaving. The human resource planner will also want to make sure that skill levels are rising within Boots and that training programmes are devised to make sure people have the skills to meet the job requirements. If all of Boots' skilled workers are just about to retire, then the company is quickly going to have to spend money on training to build up a new pool of expertise.
Succession
Succession is the way in which one person follows another into a particular job or role within a company. Boots needs to make sure it is grooming people to take on the responsibilities required. If it does not do this, it will suddenly find itself with a vacuum where it has not developed the appropriate positions of responsibility and the company will be missing the right people in key positions to hold the organisation together.
The external labour market
This is a market of potential employees for Boots or any particular organisation to choose from when recruiting more workers. The employees are usually listed locally, regionally or nationally whom have the skills and experience required at a particular time.
The national labour market
When Boots examine the supply of the labour market, a number of factors need to be taken into consideration:
? Trends in size/characteristics of the working population
? Competition for labour
? The overall level of economic activity
? Education and training opportunities
? The effect of government policies
Trends in the size/characteristics of the working population
The one factor that will definitely affect the human resource department of Boots is the changes in the age distribution of the UK population. To meet their human resource requirements, the company now have to look further afield when recruiting new staff, as there is now fewer school leavers and young workers available for employment. This may involve recruiting more women to balance out the organisations male to female ratio or more elderly employees to gain that further experience into the workforce.
Competition for labour
Persons of specific qualifications such as ICT may be offered more attractive wage packages than other members of Boots' workforce, as the competition for recruiting these rare potential employees is high. In other words - Organisations compete with each other by offering potential employees with rare qualifications high wage packages.
The overall level of economic activity
The demand for employees can be determined by whether the economy is in a boom or recession period. If there is a high demand for goods and services Boots' productivity will increase along with sales and profit. More demand for the products or services leads to a higher demand rate for employees. If the unemployment rate is at a low, the economy will be at a high. However, this factor can make it extremely difficult for human resource planners to recruit the right sorts of employees with the correct sorts of skills.
Education and training opportunities
With higher education opportunities evermore increasing - young people are seeking to gain more qualifications in order to advance to a higher paid occupation. Because over recent years the level of higher education opportunities has grown the level of skilled workers coming into the labour market has decreased. Young people appreciate the need for higher skill levels in order to compete in the job market.
The effect of government policies
Government legislation can affect the labour market in a number of ways. The government provides incentives to organisations to employ and train people. Where such incentives are available, they will reduce the costs of labour and therefore have implications for human resource planning.
The lifelong learning in this country (and in Europe) has meant the general skill levels of the working population have been improving. With new courses such as the AVCE (Advanced Vocational Certificates in Education) and NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) being taken by an increased amount of people has led to a rise in skill level in the economy. The reasons for this happening is that the curriculum in schools make it a necessity for pupils to attain the required grades in literacy, numeracy and information and communication technology skills for the future of the economy.
By giving organisations incentives to recruit young people and the unemployed, the government has given the economy a high increase in the supply of labour.
Local employment
For Boots and many other organisations, the state of the local labour market is as significant as what is happening nationally or regionally. Boots need to know about the supply of labour in the locations where they are operating. The company needs to know about current and future supply trends.
A report published in December 2000 showed that it is a gross simplification to think of the UK simply in terms of north-south divide. The report showed that a more accurate picture is of a relatively prosperous south with pockets of poverty and a relatively less prosperous north with pockets of prosperity. In the jobs market the gaps between regional unemployment rates in 2001 were lower than they had been for over 20 years, but the south-east had far lower employment (3.7%) than the north-east (10.1%). The south-east also had the highest proportion of its working-age population in employment, the lowest proportion of the UK workforce with no qualifications and the lowest proportion claiming benefits.
These sorts of statistics are essential to a business organisation such as Boots in understanding local supply conditions, and are looked upon into more detail further on in the report. Further information is provided by local employment offices and job centres, which hold details of unemployment figures of their particular areas.
Local employment trends
Local employment levels give an indication of the general availability of labour and suggest whether it will be easy or difficult to recruit. It is also important to find out more about which organisations in a locality have been laying off workers. Often, when a major employer closes down or discards labour, this provides an opportunity for another local company, which may be able to employ the workers who have been made redundant. These employees might have the right sorts of occupational or transferable skills that could be applied to similar work.
A study of local employment trends will give an idea of whether demand for certain types of work is rising or falling. Where demand increases this will lead to shortages.
Local skills shortages
Within any area at one time, there will be jobs that are going into decline because the skills required for those jobs are becoming redundant. At the same time, new skills and capabilities will be emerging, and demand for these will be rising faster than supply. As a result, skills shortages will arise and these will cause considerable frustration for local employers. The wages of people in the skills shortages areas will be rising and there will be competition to recruit and retain these scarce employee.
Where a local shortage occurs, employers will often seek to advertise and recruit in other areas, regions or even countries. This is why, for example, there are many doctors from over seas working in both private practice and for the National Health Service in the UK.
Boots need to be aware of local skills shortages so they can develop their own training programmes to make sure there are enough people coming through with the skills required. They will also work together with local employers in the same industry to support local school, college and university courses that train people the skills required for these specific industries.
Competition for employees
Boots will be interested to know whether its competitors are expanding and, therefore, increasing the demand for labour, or whether local redundancies mean labour is more readily available. See below:
Competitors expanded
Competitors contract
Demand for labour in the locality increases.
Demand for labour in the locality falls
Supply of labour contracts
Supply of labour expands
Leading to rising wage rates
Leading to a fall in wage rates
Increased difficulty in recruiting the right sort of employees
Easier to recruit the right sort of employees
Availability of labour
The amount of labour in a particular area depends on the number of people available for work. With modern transport systems it is usually quite easy for people to travel to work, but an organisation such as Boots may need to develop its own systems to make sure it is easier for people to undertake the journeys, e.g. a work bus. With modern employers locating on the outskirts of towns, the issue of getting the right numbers of the right sorts of people to work is an important one.
The availability of labour will depend on such factors as the age distribution of the local population (although this tends to follow national patterns), attitudes to women working and the extent to which young people stay on at school, college or go on to higher education.
How Boots would use local labour market information to recruit a supervisor
If Boots found that it needed to recruit an office supervisor externally, after finding that the company did not have the suitable candidate(s) internally, it would need to use relevant local labour market information. Boots would need to research the following:
. The size of the working population of the UK
2. The size of the working population of Belfast
3. Age breakdown of Belfast's workforce
4. Gender breakdown of Belfast's workforce
5. Employment status of Belfast's workforce
6. Unemployment trends within Belfast and also Nationally
7. Qualifications of suitable people within Belfast
8. Number of people staying on at school Nationally
9. Skills shortages within Belfast
0. Wage rates within Belfast and also National
. The size of the working population of the UK. Unfortunately this was unable to be found after much research.
2/3. The age structure of the population working age in , from 1997 to 2010.
Population
Change %
997
2000
2010
97 - 00
00 - 10
6-24
25-34
35-44
45-59
60-64
65+
50,500
67,900
66,700
97,400
26,000
88,500
50,400
62,500
69,300
00,100
27,600
90,000
54,900
55,200
59,200
05,200
36,900
00,200
-0.2
-7.6
+3.9
+2.8
+6.2
+1.7
+8.9
-11.7
-14.5
+5.9
+33.7
+11.3
The current workforce of Belfast is estimated to be 228,000. Belfast's workforce declined by an estimated 1,700 or -0.7% during the period 1991-1997. The male workforce declined during this period (-3,400 or -2.6%). Females economic activity grew during the same period (+1,600 or 1.6%).
4a. Male workforce change 1997 - 2010
Male workforce
Change %
997
2000
2010
97 - 00
00 - 10
6-24
25-34
35-44
45-59
60-64
65+
9,600
33,000
30,600
38,600
4,400
,500
9,200
30,500
31,900
39,500
4,600
,500
21,100
27,000
27,500
41,500
6,400
,800
-2.0
-7.6
+4.2
+2.3
+4.5
0.0
+9.9
-11.5
-13.8
+5.1
+39.1
+20.0
Source: Cambridge Econometrics, 1997
4b. Female workforce change 1997 - 2010
Female workforce
Change %
997
2000
2010
97 - 00
00 - 10
6-24
25-34
35-44
45-59
60-64
65+
5,300
23,500
25,400
31,700
3,300
,300
5,400
21,900
27,000
32,900
3,700
,200
6,500
9,500
23,200
34,600
4,900
,300
+0.7
-6.8
+6.3
+3.8
+12.1
-7.7
+7.1
-11.0
-14.1
+5.2
+32.4
+8.3
Source: Cambridge Econometrics, 1997
5. Total employed in Belfast broken down into full-time, part-time and self-employed workers.
Employment status
Total employed 1997
% change 97-00
% change 00-10
Male full-time
Female f-t
Male part-time
Female p-t
Self employed
Total
79,860
45,090
0,480
47,780
37,710
220,930
-1.5
-1.2
1.0
7.0
7.8
2.6
-8.9
-8.9
-26.3
-17.0
-27.6
5.2
Source: Cambridge Econometrics, 1997
Total employment in Cumbria is forecast to grow during the period up to 2010, full time employment male and female is expected to decline. This is largely a result of its concentration in manufacturing industries.
Total female employment is expected to rise largely as a result of its concentration on part-time employment. Part-time employment is expected to rise, growth will be based in service industries particularly retailing and hotel and catering. Self-employment is also expected to increase.
6a. Unemployment in the UK (000's)
993 2, 997
994 2, 798
995 2, 518
996 2, 394
997 2, 087 INCERT CHART
998 1, 822
999 1, 795
2000 1, 661
2001 1, 453
Unemployment levels have being decreasing steadily in the past 9 years as you can see in the chart and graph above. Unemployment in the United Kingdom has reached its lowest level in twenty years. This is good news for the economy and the prosperity of the workforce, but low employment brings with it the risk of skill shortages.
6b. Regional Unemployment
The levels of unemployment in each region change dramatically. Below you can see the percentage of people unemployed in each region of the UK.
Region
% of people unemployed
North East
London
Scotland
Northern Ireland
Wales
West midlands
North west
East midlands
South west
East Anglia
South east
9.2
7.1
6.6
6.1
6.0
5.8
5.2
4.6
4.1
3.7
3.0
Source: Labour force survey (June - August 2000)
The North East is the highest with mines and ship yards going out of business.
7. Qualifications of suitable people in Belfast
Derry
Belfast
NVQ 1
.5
.9
NVQ 2
29.8
29.3
NVQ 3
2.7
3.2
NVQ 4
1.4
1.4
NVQ 5
4.2
4.5
No NVQ
40.4
39.7
In the above table shows what percentage of people have the qualifications specified in the chart. The highlighted area shows what qualifications are needed to become an office supervisor.
8. Full-time and part-time pupils in school in the United Kingdom
Year
Number
990 900,199
991 900,260
992 900,368
993 900,513
994 900,571
995 900,714
996 900,813
997 900,905
998 900,973
999 1, 000, 019
2000 1, 000, 081
From this table you can see that the number of pupils in school has increased dramatically in the last ten years. This means there should be more young people with qualifications.
The number of students in full-time education (all ages) is 1,065 thousand. Below is a chart breaking this figure down into countries. You can see that England has by far the highest number of students in higher education. This is mainly because England has the largest population. The number of students staying on in higher education has increased.
This means that there are less young people available in the labour market. This means there will not be as many young people available for the Cumberland to employ.
9. Skills shortages
Occupations
Carlisle
Cumbria
Managers & administrators
2.3
1.7
Professional
9.3
9.4
Technical
8.9
8.6
Clerical & secretarial
4.3
2.0
Crafts and related
1.5
6.0
Personal & protective services
1.3
2.0
Sales
9.9
8.9
Plant & machine operatives
1.9
0.6
Others
0.9
0.9
The table above shows the different types of occupations people of Cumbria have/had in 2000. The highlighted area indicates the percentage of Managers and administrators there were/are in Carlisle and Cumbria. This is the area Boots would look into when recruiting an Office supervisor. It is clear that there are skills shortages mainly in Technical and Professional occupations in Cumbria.
