Skills crisis set to kill business

UK industry is entering the terminal stages of a major skills crisis threatening companies with collapse, a new report has warned.

The looming emergency 'will result in many of the professional IT workforce in the UK becoming casualties in the transition to the information society'.

So claims the Skills Trend Update study just published by the Institute for the Management of Information Systems (Imis). It highlights rising levels of staff poaching by organisations desperate to acquire expertise, like year 2000 skills, no longer available on the open market.

Many suppliers are having to focus on core skills because of falling numbers of staff with fashionable skills like Windows NT.

The crisis 'combines the worst features of decimalisation and Big Bang' and companies failing to meet immediate needs will go under, the report warns.

Imis has put the Government under pressure for emergency action in the budget. Writing to Chancellor Gordon Brown, the institute suggested using the Welfare to Work programme to organise workplace supervision for trainees; and inviting proposals for schemes giving work to unemployed young adults with new computing skills.

Imis strategic advisor Philip Virgo told Brown: 'We must make it cheaper and easier for employers to train than to recruit.'