Friday, July 4, 2025

Doc, I’m from the future: East Midlands businesses seek skills flux capacitor

East Midlands business leaders are channelling their inner Doc Brown – and they’ve got a message for their past selves: “Great Scott! Train your team!”

In a nod to Back to the Future’s 40th birthday, Lloyds’ Business Barometer shows nearly half (45%) of East Midlands bosses would go back in time to boost skills in their workforce. A similar proportion would invest more in marketing or communications (47%), while two in five (40%) would launch new products or services.

Look ahead to the future and the skills race is still on. Nearly half (47%) say upskilling is key to growth, with skills relating to sustainability (62%), AI (51%), cybersecurity (48%) and leadership (45%) top of their priority lists.

Dave Atkinson, regional director for the East Midlands, said: “Across the East Midlands, businesses are taking cues from past experience as they plan ahead and prioritise the skills that will help them grow.

“Alongside know-how in areas like sustainability or AI, leadership skills are seen as a vital ingredient to long-term success – something that will help companies not only achieve their ambitions, but also build even stronger resilience.”

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our news site - please take a moment to read this important message:

As you know, our aim is to bring you, the reader, an editorially led news site and magazine but journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them.

With the Covid-19 pandemic having a major impact on our industry as a whole, the advertising revenues we normally receive, which helps us cover the cost of our journalists and this website, have been drastically affected.

As such we need your help. If you can support our news sites/magazines with either a small donation of even £1, or a subscription to our magazine, which costs just £33.60 per year, (inc p&P and mailed direct to your door) your generosity will help us weather the storm and continue in our quest to deliver quality journalism.

As a subscriber, you will have unlimited access to our web site and magazine. You'll also be offered VIP invitations to our events, preferential rates to all our awards and get access to exclusive newsletters and content.

Just click here to subscribe and in the meantime may I wish you the very best.












Latest news

Related news

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close