27% employees will retire before 2020 – prepare your business now

By How’s Business

27% of York, North Yorkshire and East Riding’s workforce is going to retire by 2020, so you need to act now to ensure your business doesn’t suffer from the upcoming skills shortage. Fortunately, there’s lots of support available to retrain, retain and recruit people for your business.

Retraining and upskilling employees shows them that you value their personal development, and can encourage them to stay with your business long after they’ve reached retirement age. By advancing loyal employees through your business, you’ll retain their skills and can have them mentor their replacement, limiting the drop in productivity that comes with change. Making use of the fully funded skills training provided by Skills Support for the Workforce can help you develop your current staff and assist your growth, ensuring that your business is future ready.

You might have some loyal employees in your business that you want to develop, but they lack a few of the basic skills necessary to successfully complete the advanced training they need for a higher position. Fully funded training from Higher Skills can give your staff those key abilities, ensuring your business has the right resources and skills to support your business growth.

If you’re upskilling your current employees to higher positions to encourage them to remain with your business, you’ll need to recruit new employees to fill their old positions. Recruitment is lengthy, and often costly, and with the growing skills gap in York, North Yorkshire and East Riding, you’re not guaranteed to find the right person.

Consider hiring apprentices for your business instead, as you’ll have a big influence on the type of training your apprentice receives and can create the ideal team. 70% of apprentices stay on with the employees who trained them, so by 2020, a retiring workforce won’t impact your productivity. With help from the Yorkshire Apprenticeship Hub, you can access fully funded support for each stage of implementing your apprenticeship scheme.

To find out more about these programmes, or any of other funded support opportunities, get in touch with How’s Business, the Growth Hub for York, North Yorkshire and East Riding, by emailing support@howsbusiness.org. How’s Business can direct you towards the best forms of training support for your business. There are lots of programmes to choose from and they can ensure you don’t waste time chasing unsuitable opportunities.