Futureskills Scotland Expert Briefing: How 'Smart' are Scottish Jobs?

Between 2002 and 2006, Futureskills Scotland conducted some 25,000 interviews with Scottish employers. The evidence gathered on employers’ views on skills, training and recruitment issues has helped inform the skills debate in Scotland. The views of employers are important. But so are the views of workers.

Futureskills Scotland funded a boost to the 2006 Work Skills in Britain Survey, to gather robust evidence on Scottish workers’ views about skills and training1. The survey covered 2,000 Scottish workers. Professor Alan Felstead is one of the respected academics who has led on the development and analysis of this work. Professor Felstead’s paper highlights a number of issues:

• The polarization of jobs in Scotland - over a quarter of jobs require higher-level qualifications whilst about 30 per cent of jobs require no qualifications on entry.
• The moderate increase in the skill content of Scottish jobs over time - Scottish jobs are becoming ‘smarter’. But not at as fast a pace as jobs in the rest of the UK.
• The low-skilled nature of many part-time jobs held by women.
• The increased proportion of Scottish jobs in which computing skills are essential - although Scotland still lags behind the rest of Britain in this important area.
• Levels of worker autonomy in Scotland are similar to those across the UK. Almost half of Scottish workers claim to have a great deal of influence over their work effort, and a similar proportion claim high influence over the quality standard of their work.
• Most workers considered the qualifications required to get the job were also ‘essential’ or ‘fairly necessary’ to do the job.
• When comparing jobs, ‘good training provision’ is a middle-ranking concern for workers. It falls behind features such as job security, enjoyable work, friendly colleagues and good pay. Having said that, ‘good training provision’ is considered an essential job feature by a fifth of Scottish workers.
• About two in every three Scottish workers received some form of training in the last year.
• Training for workers is largely instigated by employers. Two-thirds of Scottish workers received training initiated at the request of their employer. For the remaining third, training was initiated at their own request.
• Those workers not receiving training did not regard their lack of training as a barrier to improved work performance. Only a fifth of non-trainees thought it would make it difficult for them to keep pace with changes in the job and even fewer thought it would hinder their career prospects. Workers who receive training see its benefits in terms of keeping up-to-date, improving their work practices and improving their skills.

Perhaps the most challenging finding from the analysis is the extent of qualification mismatch in the Scottish labour market, from the workers’ perspective. The Scottish education and training system has been successful in developing the skills and qualifications of the workforce. But it appears that the level of skills demanded by employers has not kept pace with this increased supply.

The recent launch of Skills for Scotland: A Lifelong Skills Strategy highlighted the importance of economic pull - stimulating demand for skills from employers and  improving the utilisation of skills in the workplace. The results of the 2006 Skills Survey underpin the importance of this issue. The 2006 Skills Survey is a valuable addition to the evidence base. Professor Felstead’s work highlights Scottish workers’ views on the qualifications, skills and training associated with their job. It provides a valuable complement to the views of Scottish employers.

	Download
Full Report (PDF 330KB) The reports are presented as Adobe Acrobat PDF files. You may acquire Acrobat Reader to view these files. This software is free.