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A focus on reskilling for the future

With the launch of Skills England, a new body focused on transforming the nation’s skills landscape, we focus on skills in financial services.

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Financial Services Skills Commission report on skills
Financial Services Skills Commission: Skills for the future of Financial Services 2024

Skills for the Future

In July, within weeks of the general election, the Labour government announced the launch of Skills England, a new body focused on transforming the nation’s skills landscape.

This reflects the government’s belief, supported by the trade union movement, that skills are essential to boosting economic growth and delivering good stable jobs for workers across industries. Their analysis suggests that a third of productivity improvement in the last two decades can be attributed to improving skill levels. However, they also estimate that skills shortages doubled between 2017 and 2022, now accounting for more than a third of job vacancies.

In the coming years, ensuring that workers have the skills they need for the future will be an essential shared mission for government, trade unions and employers.

Skills in Financial Services

In the financial sector, the pace of technological change is driving a continual demand for new skills. We know that Accord members are constantly upskilling in key areas, but the goalposts are moving all the time as new digital tools and approaches continue to change the way the industry operates.

In a report published this year, the Financial Services Skills Commission found that regarding a range of key skills, demand in the financial sector is still outstripping supply. In 2023, three in ten roles in financial services went unfilled, with particular hiring challenges in data, software, cyber and risk. The biggest supply-demand gap exists in machine learning/AI, which will be a major growth area in the coming years.

However, while there is a growing need for digital skills, behavioural skills are seeing the highest growth in demand, especially around empathy and coaching.

There is progress being made. The report found that 71% of the commission’s members are actively reskilling in the UK, and that the number of people being reskilled had almost doubled since the previous year in the companies surveyed. Total learning hours are on an upward trend and non-mandatory learning seems to be increasing slightly too.

This makes sense for big companies. Both LBG and TSB rightly recognise that their commercial success depends on the skills of their workforce. In both companies, there are regular opportunities for professional advancement and we all know colleagues who joined the bank right out of school and have developed their skills and built high-value professional careers.

However, both Accord and the employers are highly aware of the need to continually grow and improve the reskilling opportunities available to members. This allows colleagues to progress and grow, to have more fulfilling working lives, and to adapt or relocate when restructures occur.

Later this year, we’ll be launching a new skills plan with Lloyds Banking Group. As a union, we also directly support our members to upskill through the Lifelong Learning Fund. You can learn more about the fund here.

Skills for the future of Financial Services 2024

Our first mission in government is to grow the economy, and for that we need to harness the talents of all our people to unlock growth and break down the barriers to opportunity.

The skills system we inherited is fragmented and broken. Employers want to invest in their workers but for too long have been held back from accessing the training they need.

Skills England will jumpstart young people’s careers and galvanise local economies. It will bring businesses together with trade unions, mayors, universities, colleges and training providers to give us a complete picture of skills gaps nationwide, boost growth in all corners of the country and give people the opportunity to get on in life.

Bridget Phillipson, Education Secretary
Lisa Sullivan, Accord PEC member
Lisa Sullivan

Members Stories

Reskilling might seem daunting, but it's amazing what we can be achieved. We've got two recent stories from members who've worked for the bank for over twenty years each. Hear their stories and their advice on reskilling.

Lisa Sullivan

In her twenty years with the bank, Lisa Sullivan has had several different roles. She began on the phones, then became an admin assistant, then moved on to a role as a business analyst, before progressing to a hybrid project manager/business analyst role.

But when her role was put at risk of redundancy in 2021, Lisa began looking for other career options, both within and outside the bank. And when she was offered the opportunity to reskill and become a quality engineer, she took it on.

“I thought I might as well give it a shot,” Lisa says. She began a ten-week training course, conducted over Teams during the second lockdown. It involved three days of classroom learning a week, along with two days of placement. “It was a really good course,” she says, starting with the very basics of what the internet is and how it works, and building up to more specific aspects of quality engineering.

When she passed the course, Lisa was able to stay in Homes in a new role as Quality Engineer, which she’s still doing today.

And because software and coding are such broad and developing areas, she’s continually building her skills further, through Pluralsight courses, attending training and knowledge exchanges within the team. “Because there’s so much out there it’s never a boring subject,” she says.

Asked what advice she gives to other members considering reskilling, Lisa emphasised that you must find a training path you want to take, in an area that interests you. “You’ve got to look at what skills you’ve got and ask can you see yourself in that role? Can you see your skills align with that role? And if you can, brilliant. Why not try it?”

Helen Poole discussing a motion at Accord's Conference 2024 - Credit: David Gordon.
Helen Poole at Accord Conference 2024
Credit: David Gordon

Helen Poole

In nearly two decades working for the bank, Helen Poole has seen a lot of change. So, in 2021, when lockdown was affecting many people’s careers, she started thinking about how to put herself in the strongest possible position in the event of further restructures.

She spoke to her manager about boosting her transferable skills and, with the manager’s encouragement, applied for a postgraduate Senior Leadership Apprenticeship at Henley Business School, supported by the bank.

It was a daunting prospect for Helen, who hadn’t previously been to university and had spent nearly her whole career with the bank. “I had complete imposter syndrome,” she says. “I can vividly remember that first introduction going, what on earth have you signed yourself up for here?”

But while the course was hard work, Helen quickly settled into the routine with the support of a study group of five colleagues from across LBG. “We just gelled from the very beginning,” she says, describing the group as friends for life. “We all said that if ever we were struggling, even if it was three on a Sunday and you were trying to write an assignment, if you messaged somebody would have said ‘I’m free now, jump on a call with me’.”

The coursework was completed in eight-week sprints, with assignments at the end of each one, before an independent endpoint assessment with an examiner for the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) at the end of two years, which Helen passed with a Distinction.

Since then, she feels she’s had wider awareness of business decisions and strategy, is more confident in her work, and feels better able to go for new opportunities, including a secondment she completed last year. 

Her advice to others who might be considering upskilling? “Give it a go. Definitely do it. I honestly thought that as somebody without a degree, never been to uni, didn’t get A-Levels, I never thought I’d be able to do it. But it’s amazing, when you put your mind to it, what you can do. I’m a big advocate of the various apprenticeships Lloyds offer and think everyone who wants to learn should look into them.”