1998 Generic Skills Survey

The Future Skills Wales (FSW) 1998 Generic Skills Survey is a survey of 6,000 individuals and 6,000 employers, chosen randomly across Wales and contacted in 1998.

As its name suggests, the survey focused on generic rather than job specific skills. This is an important measure because it relates to skills needed across most, or in some cases all, occupations. Welsh employers and individuals need sufficient access to these skills in order to develop in organisations and careers respectively in the years ahead.

These reports include information on:

• Employers’ present and future needs for generic skills, together with attitudes towards investment in skills development
• Recruitment practices and difficulties
• Current and future supply of skills
• Barriers to participation in learning
• Mismatches between skill supply and demand, hard-to-fill vacancies, skill shortages and gaps
• Comparisons with gaps and shortages in other UK nations

Regional Reports

As well as the summary and main report, reports are set out below in relation to the four economic regions of Wales.

Sector Reports

These sector reports aim to extend and complement the work begun by the 1998 Future Skills Wales project, which forecast future generic skills needs across Wales using forecasting and survey data.

These reports add studies of future vocational skills needs within key sectors in Wales. Each sector study is based on desk research and discussions with key individuals, qualitative interviews with practitioners and employers, and aims to provide an overview of the sector, the skills issues and current and potential actions to futher strengthen the sector. Businesses and employees in each of the sectors studied have achieved great successes; that is why these sectors have become important for Wales. The focus on current skills issues should not obscure these achievements or the determination of all concerned to meet current and future challenges.

Each of the individual sector reports is complimented by a report on management and information technology skills issues across the sectors studied and reviews the situation in each sector and draws out common themes and implications.