Picture a system where we know exactly what employers want and when they want it. There is no guesswork - just actual evidence. That’s what Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIP) encourage regional organisations across England to do: develop a plan to understand regional skills demand and roll out strategies to ensure this demand is met.
Surrey Chambers of Commerce is the appointed Employer Representative Body (ERB) of Surrey and North and Mid-Hampshire, one of the 38 areas in England with a designated LSIP. As an ERB, this organisation must lead and review the LSIP project in this area.
To ensure that this local labour market lives up to its full potential (and meets government requirements), Surrey Chambers of Commerce knew that it needed to gain clarity over their labour market data. So, they embarked on an innovative route.
Back to the Future: Creating the Future Skills Hub
As an external-facing, online platform, the Future Skills Hub from Surrey Chambers of Commerce is designed to provide employers, providers and other key stakeholders in the local skills system with access to reports, events, updates and other resources to help them better understand the local labour market and support strategic workforce development. Central to this is skills data.
Aiming to make skills data accessible to everyone, Sparsholt College Group, delivery partners in the LSIP, approached Lightcast to create some jobs and careers resources. Funded using the Local Skills Improvement Fund programme from the Department for Education, and powered by Lightcast data, dozens of factsheets and profiles are freely available to download, containing extensive labour market data - exclusively for Surrey, North, and Mid-Hampshire. The resources are divided into three sections
1. Key sector factsheets
Ten sector factsheets each explore one of the LSIP’s key sectors, including IT, Health and Social Care, and Green Economy. When you choose a sector, you will see its top five occupations, top five recruiting businesses, and most in-demand common, specialised, and digital skills.
You can also find out the number of job postings in this sector over the last year, the number of companies within this industry that are actively recruiting, and the median advertised salary in the sector. A detailed map also illustrates the job posting distribution across the area.
2. Key sector profiles
Here, you can access data on the same ten LSIP sectors, but you can also see national data for each industry. These key sector profiles show the median advertised salaries and the number of job postings both in Surrey and North and Mid-Hampshire and nationwide, so you can easily benchmark these values.
You can also see the total number of businesses operating in this sector in this area. These benchmarking capabilities provide a more transparent snapshot of your area’s standing and highlight which sectors may need further investment to reach (or surpass) the national average.
3. Occupations factsheets
You can dive into 32 different occupations in this part of the website. You will see the most common job titles, top five recruiting businesses, and most in-demand common, specialised, and digital skills for each occupation. You can also find out the number of jobs advertised for this occupation, median advertised salary, and number of companies recruiting.
Building Tomorrow Today: The Benefits of Lightcast Data for Surrey Chamber of Commerce
The Future Skills Hub is a comprehensive and forward-looking resource for local businesses, educators, and regional organisations. With Lightcast’s granular data and advanced analytics, Surrey Chamber of Commerce can go beyond raw data and get actionable insights that paint a clear picture of the weaknesses and strengths of every LSIP sector in its area.
These insights can help the team shape conversations and policies to address skills gaps or talent shortages. And thanks to the Future Skills Hub's public nature, any other governmental organisation can use the platform to support businesses and partners in matching skills availability to skills demand. The Opportunities page was designed to help connect employers and providers and is proving popular with providers in showcasing, for example, industrial placements / work experience; use of specialist equipment and/or facilities and sharing expertise to help fill gaps in skills & knowledge.
The intuitiveness of the data on the Future Skills Hub, makes it particularly useful for educational institutions and businesses, too. From enabling educators to review their curriculum and adapt courses to meet business demands to supporting private companies in making informed hiring decisions, this platform is the foundation of a fruitful LSIP strategy.
What’s Next?
The impacts of the Future Skills Hub on current public policy are just the beginning. These data serve as a baseline to measure future progress, track the effects of the Surrey Chamber of Commerce’s initiatives, and ensure that each intervention and investment leads to tangible improvements over time. The data embedded into the Future Skills Hub can also be used to meet national goals for local growth and skills development, two critical areas of the new UK government’s economic plans.
As the leading labour market data provider, Lightcast is proud to partner with organisations like the Surrey Chamber of Commerce and leverage our extensive data, insight, and talented team of experienced consultants to help them drive change in their areas. If you are looking for labour market data for your area or have a particular project in mind, contact our team.
The Future Skills Hub, hosted by Surrey Chambers of Commerce, is over one year old and we continue to curate content for employers, providers and other stakeholders across Surrey, North and Mid-Hampshire, to help update on and inform the skills priorities outlined in our LSIP report. One of these is linked to improving information, advice and guidance. The suite of factsheets, commissioned from Lightcast, have proved incredibly popular with careers professionals in our college community who are using them with their students to help show the connections between their courses and great, local career opportunities.
💡 Check out some more of our pieces looking at where our data has been used by organisations in their Local Skills Improvement Plans:
