The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) has confirmed that it will continue to support the Construction Talent Retention Scheme (CTRS), which will remain free to use for all construction businesses and candidates until at least April 2022. The scheme has promoted nearly 9,000 job vacancies from construction and trade businesses.
The CLC works with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and others to support ongoing development for the CTRS. The team hopes to offer a ‘Talentview’ early careers offering soon, to help attract new talent into the construction industry.
CTRS is estimated to have saved businesses more than £485,000 to date, based on typical recruitment costs, together with further savings achieved through internal redeployment placements facilitated through the system. Currently there are more than 1,700 live vacancies being promoted on the CTRS site and more than 1,600 individual candidates registered. Almost three quarters of the employers registered on the scheme are SMEs but the CTRS has also received strong backing from bigger firms such as MACE, Sir Robert McAlpine, Kier Group, Barratt Developments, AECOM and Costain.
As part of an ongoing investment to help tackle skills shortages and attract new talent into the industry, the CTRS plans to broaden its support for early careers provision. It aims to help employers and candidates interested in developing apprenticeships, graduate recruitment and work experience opportunities. Linked to CTRS and other related platforms, Talentview Construction will be designed to make it easy for those searching for a career in construction to join, helping to address the predicted demand for additional roles to support the industry’s predicted growth and its drive towards net zero.
Mark Reynolds, the CLC lead on skills, said: “The CTRS was set up last year as a rapid response measure to mitigate any loss of people and skills from the industry caused by Covid-19, having learned what happened in previous recessions. We thank the Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy, CITB, major employers and others for their support.
“While there have obviously been redundancies in our sector, we have also seen a high level of skills retention and redeployment work too, including the fantastic employer response to retaining apprentices. The level of support and collaboration from the breadth of the sector has given us the confidence to develop further an industry-wide portal for talent management. Talentview Construction, an addition to CTRS, will soon provide a shop window for all those wishing to enter the industry as new entrants and career changers – a real opportunity to attract the new skills we need and to improve the diversity of the industry.”
For more information, see www.trs-system.co.uk/construction.
