The Real Problem Behind Skills Shortages? Businesses Aren’t Doing This One Thing
Everyone loves a headline about “skills shortages”.
But if you run a small business, this probably isn’t how it shows up day-to-day.
What you actually feel is this:
people struggling to step up
managers repeating themselves
onboarding that works sometimes
capability gaps you can’t quite name, but keep tripping over
And the frustrating part?
You are training people.
The real problem isn’t a lack of effort.
It’s a lack of structure.
Because according to the CIPD report, employer investment in training has fallen 27% per trainee since 2011, just when businesses need it most.
Adult participation in further education has also collapsed.
❌ Job-related training is stagnant.
❌ Participation drops as workers age.
❌ Lower-income groups learn the least.
In other words: The people who most need development are getting the least of it.
And smaller businesses feel this most intensely.
The missing piece: structured reskilling
Most small businesses already train their teams, but what they don’t have is structure:
No development pathways
No consistent onboarding
No clarity on what skills matter
No way to track progress
No repeatable system
Training becomes reactive.
Organic.
Ad hoc.
Manager-dependent.
Which means the results are unpredictable.
The real issue isn’t motivation.
It’s lack of structure.
If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yes… but I don’t know where our gaps actually are,” that’s exactly the problem most SMEs face.
You can’t fix what you can’t see.
Why this one missing step creates chaos
Most small businesses don’t fail to train.
They fail to connect training into a repeatable system.
Without structured skilling:
performance is inconsistent
skills gaps widen silently
managers repeat themselves
onboarding quality varies
learning becomes guesswork
progression stalls
capability stagnates
Sound familiar?
The report is clear: all businesses need structured learning to keep up
The CIPD highlights that:
Technology is shifting tasks
AI is augmenting roles
The green transition is reshaping skills
Older workers need targeted support
Replacement demand will create 17.5 million job openings by 2035
All of that requires purposeful, structured development, not “quick chats”, “shadowing” or “hoping someone picks things up”.
So how do you create structure without overwhelm?
You don’t need a full L&D department.
You need a simple system that does three things:
1. Identify the skills that matter.
Not everything.
Just the essential performance skills.
2. Build learning into onboarding and workflow.
Short, scenario-based, not a big course.
3. Measure what’s actually working.
If it’s not improving performance, it’s not training… it’s noise.
A fast, simple way to start
A fast, simple way to see what’s really going on
This is exactly why I created the Learning Impact Scorecard.
In under 2 minutes, it shows you:
where training is actually helping
where structure is missing
which improvements will deliver the fastest ROI
and where capability is quietly being lost
You get a free personalised report in under 2 minutes.
👉 Take the Learning Impact Scorecard
Skills shortages aren’t the issue.
Skills structure is.