A new report* revealed that 32% of employees reported they had changed jobs in the last 12 months because their employer wasn’t offering enough upskilling and training opportunities.

The report, Data Literacy: The Upskilling Evolution, was developed by Qlik in partnership with The Future Labs and combines insights from expert interviews with surveys from over 1,200 global C-level executives and 6,000 employees. In the UK, over three-quarters (76%) of employees are investing their own time and money (58%) to plug the professional skills gap needed for the future enterprise – with these employees spending an average of nearly 7 hours each month and nearly £2.6K each year.

“Businesses not investing in upskilling will have a very real impact on workplace inequity and will put pressure on employees to invest significant sums of money in their personal development to keep up with technological requirements that are becoming essential in the workplace, such as data literacy,” said Kevin Hanegan, Chief Learning Officer, Qlik.  “This is not acceptable and we must do more to close this very real data skills gap and encourage more learning opportunities at work.”

Qlik supports Learning at Work Week 2022 – an initiative from Campaign for Learning that takes place this week, 16th to 22nd May 2022, to engage and support people in lifelong learning. They use findings to inform dialogue with policymakers to encourage learning for everyone.

Learning can occur anywhere, but it continues to be essential in the workplace. Qlik’s research revealed that business leaders and employees alike predict that data literacy – the ability to read, work with, analyze and communicate with data – will be the most in-demand skill by 2030. Every single business leader surveyed reported that they would offer a salary increase for candidates that could demonstrate their data literacy. On average, they would offer a 24% salary increase for demonstrating this skillset. For the average UK employee, this translates into an additional £7.6K to their annual salary**.

“This week’s Campaign for Learning initiative provides a great opportunity to highlight the missed upskilling opportunity,” said Kevin Hanegan, Chief Learning Officer, Qlik. “Skills like data literacy have never been more critical as they are today, as the role of data in the enterprise continues to evolve at speed. We encourage the Government to take action to ensure businesses can fund training their staff for the future workplace, so they can continue to learn without the financial burden being put on them.

*About the research

Data Literacy: The Upskilling Evolution is based on research conducted by Censuswide of 1,209 C-level executives and 6,197 global full-time employees in organisations of 50+ employees in the UK, USA, Germany, France, Japan, Australia and New Zealand in October and November 2021.

**To calculate the average salary increase for UK. employees, the percentage average salary increase that would be offered by UK C-level executives (24.24%) was calculated against the most recent average yearly salary shared by the Office for National Statistics (£31,285 for the tax year ending 5 April 2021).

The Data Literacy: The Upskilling Evolution report can be downloaded here.