Suffolk employers struggling to fill vacancies despite job surge in East Anglia
Companies are finding it hard to recruit skilled talent despite new figures showing that employment in the region is almost at record levels
Businesses in Suffolk are struggling to recruit and retain skilled staff, even as new figures from the Department of Work and Pensions show that employment in East Anglia is almost up to 80 percent.
This rise in the number of people employed seems to be accompanied by a rise in the number of vacancies, with new data from the Office for National Statistics indicating that there was a record 1.2 million job vacancies towards the end of 2021.
Richard Gapper owns Bison Electricals, a Suffolk-based electrical insulation solutions firm.
He says although his order book is filled, he's struggling to find enough staff to fulfil those orders: "I find that we're restricted at the moment purely because we aren't able to get enough staff.
"From our perspective as an electrical insulation company, which involves skilled labour, we've got a distinct lack of qualified electricians and this has been a challenge for a number of years.
"We've got to a point where in the last few years, we've used up whatever buffer we've had and its now becoming crucial that we act."
He explains the situation he's facing: "We do a lot of work in hazardous areas, such as explosive environments which requires a specialist set of skills.
"There is a really big industry in Suffolk for hazardous area insulations for the oil and gas sector. What we're finding is that there is absolutely none of this skilled labour about.
"I've had numerous people trying to find these specialist electricians and we're having to go all over the country trying to find them. What we're also seeing is that we're not the only ones looking for this staff with this skillset.
"So this talent is jumping from place to place, to get the money (offered by competitors also looking for the same skills). And so they should, at the end of the day they also have families and bills to look after.
"But what it means is that our costs go up and inflation rises."
So how can these imbalances in the job market be resolved?
One option is through the greater use of the Kickstart scheme to hire more apprentices. Mr Gapper says his firm is committed to offering opportunities to young people but adds that "over-reliance on the scheme is not sustainable for small businesses."
"There's no shortage of young persons who want to take on an apprenticeship. But we did an estimate around two years ago and found that for an electrician's four year apprenticeship, it costs around £86,000 pounds, which is a lot of money to swallow for a small and midsize enterprises (SME) ."
Staff shortages have also been compounded as a result of license and qualification related issues. "Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been a lot of people been in lockdown who were forced to work from home and some of their qualifications, which have expiry dates on them, expired and weren't able to renew them.
"This has meant that we're faced with even further skills shortage", he explains.
So what steps can businesses and Government take to alleviate the issue?
Mr Gapper believes that a review into the hiring practices of firms of all sizes and further investment into the Kickstart scheme is crucial. He also adds that authorities must also consider the needs of SMEs, which account for 99.9 percent of the business population.
"At the moment, the requirements are going more towards some of the larger corporations. We must remember that SMEs make up most of the economy so that's where the focus should go towards."