The Government is coming under increasing pressure from powerful lobbyists to provide better IT Courses for workers, enabling them to make the most of job opportunities during the recession. With a growth in the number of unemployed as a direct result of the deepening crisis, trade union Unite and IT Sector Skills Council e-skillsUK have written to the skills minister Paul Murphy with a series of recommendations. They believe, as do many other skills providers and IT training organisations, that the UK workforce needs to be equipped to cope with an increasingly digital economy.

One of the key points raised by the letter to Mr Murphy MP emphasises the need to develop a new funding stream which allows providers to offer subsidised training to individuals, rather than placing the financial emphasis on employers. During an economic recession, many employers, particularly those running small to medium sized businesses, do not have the spare capital to invest in the IT training that their workforce needs. Even before the recession began to bite, an e-skills survey showed that employers believed that 37% of their workforce did not have the IT skills they need. As technology develops ever faster, the need for ongoing training and skills development becomes more urgent if UK PLC is to avoid being left behind in the global marketplace.

Over the next three years, employers see this situation as becoming more urgent, believing that a lack of IT user skills training is a major cause of exclusion for many workers from job opportunities and career development. The biggest stumbling block is not the availability of training – of which there is plenty – but the financial support to those who wish to develop their IT skills set.

The Government's current skills strategy is based around the much publicised ‘Train to Gain' programme, which allows employers to identify the training needs of their staff and commission publicly subsidised courses for them. However, many employees have only basic IT skills and are excluded from the scheme because the employer may not see any financial or business return from their inclusion. These people, as well as the 17 million identified in a government consultation report as ‘digitally excluded' and those whose employers choose not to participate in the ‘Train to Gain' scheme, are at risk of being left behind as the jobs market demands a higher level of IT expertise from job candidates. This problem is compounded by the fact that many of these people fall into a low-income bracket and therefore cannot afford to fund their own training outside work.

Four primary issues have been raised by both Unite and e-Skills – issues that if addressed in a positive manner could see a workforce that is far more equipped to deal with a digital economy and plug the gap in the skills market. They would like to see an increase in flexibility of funding under the ‘Train to Gain' scheme to allow learners to access funding even if the skills are not directly job related, thereby encouraging career changes. The issue of the funding stream allowing training providers to offer subsidised services is one that has widespread support from many other organisations involved in IT training provision and goes hand in hand with key issues already raised.

Unite and e-Skills would also like to see flexibility within ‘Train to Gain' to allow funding for employers and their workers who can demonstrate that IT training could allow companies to put workers in other positions within the company and so avoid the spectre of redundancy. This is particularly important during a recession, as it allows businesses to place people where they will be most effective within their organisation, rather than swelling the numbers of the unemployed.