FSN: Professional skill shortages hit ERP and financials implementations

Professional skill shortages hit ERP and financials implementations

20th February 2006
Increasing numbers of professional and managerial level workers are being recruited from Eastern Europe, because employers can't find enough skilled staff in the UK . The latest findings from the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) reveal that 10% of organisations surveyed recruit from Eastern EU countries, making this the most popular source of managerial, professional and technical workers from overseas.

James Bradshaw Managing Director of SystemsAccountants, a leading recruiter and provider of pan-European project teams for financial transformation and systems implementation told FSN, "We're increasingly seeing a shortage of skills in high demand areas such as SAP as well as those niche categories such as 3rd Generation Reporting Systems, for example, Cartesis Magnitude & Hyperion HFM.”

To date, the focus has been on the number of semi and unskilled workers being recruited to the UK . But the latest RCI research, produced by Cranfield School of Management and The Daily Telegraph, reveals that an increasing number of workers from Eastern Europe are being recruited into more skilled and senior roles.

While 10% of organisations recruit to managerial, professional and technical positions from Eastern EU countries, another 7% of organisations recruit from the rest of the EU, while 4% of respondents recruit from Asia and another 4% from the United States and Canada .

Skill shortages are the main reason for overseas recruitment, with 39% of respondents reporting a fall in the quality of job applicants over the last year. Almost a third of organisations (31%) have increased their overseas recruitment because of skills shortages; 66% say they have experienced recruitment difficulties due to skills shortages and almost all respondents (98%) expect these difficulties to remain the same, or even rise, over the next 12 months.

Commenting on the findings, Shaun Tyson, Professor of Human Resource Management at Cranfield School of Management, said, "The UK simply doesn't have enough skilled people to meet the demands of a growing economy and an ageing population. Expansion in the economy is becoming increasingly dependent upon attracting high quality employees from overseas. We anticipate European labour markets will therefore grow in significance to employers"

Bradshaw agrees, he told FSN that, “to counter these scarcities we have had to establish links into overseas labour markets, particularly in Eastern Europe , India and Australasia . This demand has been further exacerbated by our clients increased requirement to mix project and line management with culturally diverse resource to support global projects and user communities."

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