London, UK: The UK transport and warehousing industry is facing a skills shortage that unchecked could represent a real threat to the sector’s future development, says John Maguire, chairman, United Kingdom Warehousing Association.
“Any industry can only be as good as the talent that it manages to attract, develop and retain but the logistics industry’s skills base is increasingly viewed an issue for the industry,” he says.
“The sector needs to recruit 900,000 individuals leading up to 2020 but nearly a fifth of vacancies in the transport and storage sector are classified as ‘hard to fill‘ because of the lack of applicants with the required skills.
“In addition to ‘soft skills’ such as customer handling and communication, it is job specific skills that are most commonly lacking. Such skills are increasingly important in a sector facing change driven by technology and globalisation.
“As businesses prepare for the economic upturn, they will need skilled people in order to respond to demand but, if it is not addressed, the current and on-going skills gap will result in increased operating costs and reduced competitiveness across the sector.”
“The logistics industry needs to agree a course of action which will lead to a more focused and unified approach to the fundamental issue of training and developing our workforce in a consistent and progressive way.
“But, at present, we do not have the cohesion in the sector to achieve this. Our larger companies have difficulty putting aside their competitive caps when addressing key industry issues. There are also historical, cultural and commercial barriers between some of our larger trade associations, which prevent a unified approach on these issues. But the industry must do better than it is,” Maguire says in his address to the association’s members at the annual general meeting.
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