Food and Drink Sector Council publishes report on Preparing for a Changing Workforce

The Food and Drink Sector Council (FDSC) has today published a report on Preparing for a Changing Workforce: A food and drink supply chain approach to skillswritten in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University (SHU).

This report outlines the sector’s ambition to address food chain productivity issues and the challenges it faces due to a shrinking labour supply.  The Food and Drink sector is calling for a joint movement to include government collaboration and a high-level set of activities and outcomes to deliver results.

The report is the first to bring together the entire sector from ‘farm to fork’ and present a cross-chain approach to addressing future workforce, skills and productivity concerns. Based on the evidence collected, the FDSC has identified early recommendations to upskill employees and attract future talent through: greater use of Apprenticeships and offering T Level work placements across the sector; improving accessibility and quality of training provision for food and drink businesses of all sizes throughout the UK; and professionalising leadership and management skills within the sector to ensure that managers are prepared for a changing workplace.  

Jon Poole – Chief executive of IFST commented:

“I was very pleased to be involved in the consultative group which input to this report. Clearly the food sector has real challenges in terms of needing to address the identified skills gaps and it is good to see the sector as a whole, working with Government to look at how best to tackle these. Obviously, as a professional institute supporting those in technical roles, we are particularly interested in how we address the skill needs relating to these roles and look forward to working with the Sector Council in delivering tangible outputs resulting from this initial report.”