Digital Skills Deficit Threatening Small Business
11th December 2017.
Productivity growth in the UK will continue to stall unless the Government tackles a digital skills deficit in small businesses, according to new research.
New research from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has found that small businesses are being threatened by their reluctance to adapt to new digitised business concepts.
The research has found that 26 per cent of business owners across the UK lack confidence in their basic digital skills, and more than 22 per cent believe a lack of basic digital skills among their staff is holding them back from increasing their digital and online presence.
Despite evidence that digital skills can have a major impact on the success of a business, a quarter of small firms still do not consider digital skills to be important to the growth of their business.
“We need to highlight the benefits of going digital and make sure that small businesses and their staff have access to basic digital skills training”, Mike Cherry, FSB national chairman said.
Mr Cherry continues: “If we can harness the digital potential of small firms, we stand a real chance of creating more world-beating businesses and boosting growth”
The survey found that large numbers of firms claimed the main barriers to training are the fact that their staff are too busy, training is too expensive, or not available locally.
Within the North East a number of initiatives are being launched to tackle the digital knowledge gap.
A £4 million programme, Digital Drive County Durham, gets under way in January in a partnership between BE Group and Business Durham, to help companies thrive in a digital world.
Meanwhile, creative and digital support agency Generator will next month roll out an eight-week digital training programme to drive forward the skills agenda for the region’s tech sector.
Jim Mawdsley, CEO of Generator agreed with the findings from the FSB, urging that this is of “growing concern” to the tech and digital sectors of the North East.
“The Government need to wake up and realise that unless radical change is implemented in the UK, we may fall behind those economies who are reacting quicker”, he added.
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