UK businesses provide employees with nearly 29 million hours of training in effort to beat constricting talent market

Companies turn to training as British Chamber of Commerce reports record recruitment challenges. Training delivered for more than 44,000 active businesses across the UK, averaging at 650 hours per business

MHR, the HR, payroll, and finance expert, has today revealed that UK companies have delivered nearly 29 million hours of training to their employees to drive increased talent retention and upskilling in a bid to address the growing talent shortage.

The delivery of this huge level of training is an attempt by companies to plug the skills gap and talent shortage in the UK. With the British Chambers of Commerce showing that this year has the highest level of recruitment challenges on record, the data from MHR’s Learning Management System (LMS) is clear evidence of the importance of training and upskilling from a cost efficiency perspective.

The training taking place in the workplace is hugely varied, and can be tailored to each employee’s job role. Popular examples include leadership and emotional intelligence courses, communication and networking, as well as more tailored training for specific tech platforms or software that allow people to upskill and perform the role above them. As it stands, the cost of filling the all job vacancies in the UK in the first half of 2023 according to data from CIPD and the ONS would amount to £1.3 billion, so providing such training to existing employees is crucial for the bottom line.

Anton Roe, CEO, MHR, comments:

“The figures are astounding – UK businesses have never faced such monumental recruitment challenges, both in terms of cost and available talent. With it costing exponentially more to recruit, train and onboard new employees, especially with the widening skills gap, it is vitally important that businesses are able to engage, upskill, develop, and retain the talent within their existing workforce.

“At MHR, we are proud to have a long track record supporting businesses in this regard, most notably through our Learning Management System, which is available to both iTrent and People First users, and has delivered training to more than 6,500 UK workers year-to-date.”