The NSW Business Chamber's inaugural Workforce Skills Survey has found employers in the Hunter are reporting high levels of skill shortages holding them back from employing new workers.
The survey measures business attitudes on employment, education and training issues and provides a comprehensive baseline for tracking future sentiment.
There appears to be an increasing inconsistency between what employers expect from their workers and the training they're getting through the education system.
"Businesses have indicated that the main reasons for reluctance sometimes relates to the cost, but also time factors of having key personnel in their organisations available to train the people and also some of the time it takes for some of the training programs and apprenticeships to be completed," said Hunter Business Chamber CEO Bob Hawes.
Businesses in the Hunter are also urging the government to take a serious look into how employees are trained, as there's an increasing lack of skills in new workers and a huge administrative burden on businesses to pick up the slack.
"There's a real need to look at how the pilot programs work, what apprenticeship models are around and whether they are effective and also being able to engage not only just with the young people looking at the pathways but also the employers, parents and carers, the advisors and the educational institutions so that they can better understand the system of how it works and so we can get it working in practice," said Bob Hawes.
Bob Hawes says the latest Hunter Research Foundation report on the Hunter's economy shows businesses are looking for new ways to better their business, rather than employ new workers.
"It (businesses in the Hunter) had a big increase in its uptake of innovation and that in itself might express that people are now looking at other ways to push their business forward other than employing people which aren't necessarily a good thing in one respect but it is good in another in that hopefully the uptake in innovation will create alternative opportunities."
