Developing a 'road-map' to facilitate employers' role in engaging with the skills development agenda

The UK construction skills shortage problem remains highly topical. Despite academic research and industrial efforts to mitigate the problem, construction employers face increasing pressure to get the skilled workforce necessary to fulfil rising workloads in the UK. There is limited success in the recruitment of non-traditional labour, shift towards prefabrication and the employment of migrant labour. Following the Leitch (2006) report, employers will be expected to become more proactive in engaging with the skills development agenda in the future. Yet, the extant literature remains fairly opaque on how employers can achieve this effectively. The research project outlined in this paper attempts to examine the processes involved in engaging employers in the skills development agenda, with a view to develop a decision-support tool (a 'road-map') for employers in this respect. The proposed research approach is outlined in this paper, which includes mapping out of current policies and initiatives that are geared towards construction skills development, case studies to explore how employers are presently engaging in skills development and action research to test the prototype tool.