The Hidden Skills Gap Behind Construction Staff Turnover

Construction’s skills shortage is usually talked about in terms of numbers, qualifications and experience.

For good reason. CITB’s latest outlook estimates the UK industry will need an average of 41,200 extra workers each year between 2026 and 2030, around 206,000 in total.

But finding enough people is only one part of the problem.

New research from City & Guilds found that 37% of Construction employers surveyed associated a lack of employability skills with high staff turnover.

And unlike a missing qualification or a lack of project experience, these are often the things that are hardest to spot on a CV.

And that’s where the hiring problem gets harder: some of the things that matter most once somebody starts are the hardest to judge before they do.

Construction’s Skills Problem Isn’t Always Where We Think It Is

Most Construction hiring briefs make the technical side relatively easy to see.

Qualifications, project experience, sector background and years at a certain level can all be checked before somebody gets anywhere near an interview.

But that’s only part of what employers need from someone once they’re actually in the role.

Skills England’s 2026 research identifies a wider set of core capabilities alongside technical skills, including planning and organising, adapting, working with others, leadership and problem-solving and decision-making. Its analysis found that Construction priority occupations require higher proficiency in problem-solving and decision-making than the UK average.

Technical experience still matters enormously. The point is that employers can be looking for two things at once: somebody who has the experience to do the job, and somebody with the wider capabilities to operate effectively within it.

The difficulty is that those two things aren’t equally easy to see before somebody is hired.

A Strong CV Can Still Hide a Weak Match

A CV is very good at showing where somebody has worked, what they’ve delivered and which qualifications they hold.

You can usually establish their project history, technical responsibilities and years of experience without too much difficulty.

What’s harder to establish is:

• how they react when priorities suddenly change
• whether they raise a problem early or wait until it becomes a bigger one
• how they communicate with clients, subcontractors or other teams
• how effectively they organise themselves when several things need attention at once

Those aren’t abstract “soft skills”. They can affect what happens on a live project.

Skills England describes core skills as fundamental abilities that contribute to somebody’s capability to carry out a job, and specifically says the mix of technical and core skills is important when recruiting into Construction.

None of this means somebody with the wrong technical background becomes a good hire because they communicate well.

But having the experience to do the job and having everything needed to succeed in it aren’t necessarily identical things.

And the real problem isn’t that those differences stay hidden forever.



It’s that some of them may only become obvious once somebody is already in the job.

The Cost Shows Up After the Hire

If somebody doesn’t hold an essential qualification, an employer can normally establish that before they start.

If they struggle to prioritise, communicate with the wider project team or deal effectively with a difficult stakeholder, it may take longer to become apparent.

By then, the business has already recruited them, onboarded them and invested time from the wider team.

That’s what makes the City & Guilds finding interesting.

Nearly two in five Construction employers in its research associated a lack of employability skills within their workforce with high staff turnover.

There’s an important limit to what that tells us. It doesn’t mean employability-skills gaps caused 37% of Construction turnover. People leave jobs for plenty of reasons, from pay and progression to management, workload and personal circumstances.

What it does show is that a sizeable group of Construction employers see a connection between these wider capability gaps and what happens after people have been hired.

That moves the conversation beyond whether these skills matter.

The harder question is which of them genuinely need to be established before somebody starts.

The Harder Question Is What Employers Actually Need on Day One

The answer isn’t to take every desirable quality and turn it into another mandatory requirement.

“Excellent communicator.”

“Strong problem solver.”

“Highly organised.”

“Works well under pressure.”

Add enough of those to every vacancy and you can end up with a longer job specification without being any clearer about the person you actually need.

A more useful distinction is:

What must already be there?
The technical knowledge, experience or behaviours the role genuinely can’t function without.

What actually needs assessing?
Important capabilities that aren’t necessarily obvious from someone’s employment history.

What can be developed?
Areas where someone has the underlying ability but may need support or experience once they join.

That also forces employers to get more specific.

“Strong communication skills” means very little on its own.

Does the person need to challenge subcontractors? Explain technical information to a client? Coordinate several teams? Handle difficult conversations when a programme slips?

Those are things a recruiter can actually search for and an interviewer can actually explore.

The aim isn’t to find somebody who arrives perfect at everything. It’s about identifying the right capabilities for the role and knowing which ones matter enough that you need confidence in them before making the hire.



Once those things are clear, the hiring process has to give employers a genuine way of assessing them.

If It Matters to the Job, It Has to Matter to the Hiring Process

A CV can cover the obvious things well: relevant experience, qualifications, project history and previous responsibilities. The interview should then add the context that isn’t as easy to see on paper.

If communication matters, for example, asking whether somebody is a “good communicator” probably won’t tell you much. It’s more useful to ask how they handled a project where something changed or went wrong, who they needed to involve and what they did next.

The same applies to decision-making, prioritisation or stakeholder management. The point isn’t to hire on personality instead of technical capability, but to make sure the process actually tests the things that will matter once the person starts.

A strong CV can tell you a lot. It just shouldn’t be expected to answer every question.

Planning your next hire?

If you’re reviewing your Q4 recruitment plans, our free Q4 Hiring Readiness Playbook can help you spot where a hire could slow down before the requirement becomes urgent, from vacancy sign-off and interview planning through to offer-to-start.

Download your free, no-obligation copy.

Author Bio

Josh Ramsay is Marketing Manager at V7 Recruitment, creating insight-led content around the hiring challenges, market shifts and industry developments shaping V7’s specialist sectors.

Working closely with V7’s recruitment teams, he brings together market knowledge and consultant expertise to produce practical content for employers, hiring teams and professionals.

V7 Recruitment supports businesses with permanent and contract recruitment across Construction, Fire & Security, Aviation, Data Centres, Mission Critical, Power Generation and Utilities.