Article by B4 Skills Expert, Sarah Jaycock, Executive Director, High Spec Composites
Recently, I spoke at the Oxfordshire Business Summit at Blenheim Palace about how High Spec Composites is addressing the skills gap. The discussions that followed reinforced a belief I’ve held for some time: perhaps we’re defining the challenge too narrowly.
When business leaders discuss the skills gap, the conversation often centres on recruitment. We can’t find the right people. Candidates lack experience. Education isn’t producing work-ready talent.
These challenges are real. But what if the skills gap isn’t simply a shortage of capability? What if it’s also a shortage of visibility, engagement and leadership?
Too often, organisations treat talent as something to acquire. We advertise vacancies, engage recruiters and compete for an increasingly limited pool of experienced people. Yet the businesses that will thrive over the next decade are unlikely to be those that compete hardest for talent. They will be the ones that deliberately create it.
At High Spec Composites, we recognised early that simply filling vacancies wasn’t a long-term growth strategy. Before making decisions about recruitment, training or succession planning, we needed to understand a more fundamental question: what skills will our business need to succeed in the future?
Many organisations can identify the people they need today but have far less visibility of the capabilities they will depend on in five years’ time.
That led us to develop a comprehensive skills matrix covering more than 160 technical, operational and business competencies. Every team member is assessed against it, giving us visibility of our strengths, gaps and future requirements.
What began as a workforce planning exercise quickly became a strategic tool. The matrix helps us target training investment, create transparent progression pathways and link development directly to reward and recognition. Most importantly, it gives people a clear understanding of how they can grow alongside the business.
And that matters.
While many organisations focus on attracting talent, far fewer devote the same energy to retaining it. Yet retention is often the most overlooked solution to a skills shortage. When people feel valued, challenged and able to progress, they are far more likely to stay. In many cases, developing and retaining great people is not only more cost-effective than recruitment – it is far more powerful.
But even the best internal strategy only solves part of the challenge.
If we want a stronger workforce tomorrow, we need to be more visible today.
Young people cannot aspire to careers they have never seen. Schools and colleges cannot prepare students for industries that rarely engage with them. And employers cannot continue to cite talent shortages while remaining absent from the conversations shaping future talent.
Across Oxfordshire, organisations such as Enterprise Oxfordshire Skills, the Oxfordshire Careers Hub and the Enterprise Adviser Network are helping create stronger connections between employers and education. They provide practical routes for businesses to get involved and contribute to developing future talent.
Yet meaningful engagement doesn’t need to be complex or time-consuming. Every business has something valuable to offer: a careers talk, factory tour, work experience placement, mock interviews, mentoring, or simply sharing what a career in their industry really looks like.
Too often, employers underestimate the impact they can have. A few hours invested in helping young people understand the opportunities available to them can shape aspirations, build confidence and provide insights that education alone cannot always deliver.
If more businesses shared their time, experience and expertise, we wouldn’t just help young people make better-informed career decisions – we would actively strengthen the talent pipeline every organisation depends upon.
The skills gap will not be solved by education alone, government alone or business alone. It will be solved through stronger collaboration between all three, with each recognising the role they play in developing the workforce of the future.
For business leaders, that means moving beyond simply consuming talent and becoming active participants in developing it.
Because the future workforce is not something any one organisation inherits.
It is something we build together.