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By contrast, employers believe it is their responsibility to fund training that helps people develop the more sophisticated generic skills that they need for work. Just over half of the employers surveyed said they believe it is their responsibility to fund the development of skills for business awareness and customer-care skills. 4. Employers are struggling to recruit school and college leavers with the skills they need for their businesses. The survey results showed that over half of the employers who took part had tried to recruit a recent school or college leaver in the past 12 months but of those that had tried, only 13.8% had always been successful. The next question asked those employers who had found it difficult to recruit young people what skills these candidates were lacking. The top four reasons reflected the early findings in the study. Nineteen per cent of the total reasons given by employers for why they were not able to recruit young people related to literacy problems and 18% related to numeracy problems. Attitudinal reasons, such as motivation and work ethics, accounted for 16% of the reasons given, with poor communication skills accounting for 12%. One further interesting finding is that many employers would prefer to recruit an employee aged over 50 who lacks the generic skills (such as IT) but has good vocational skills, rather than a more inexperienced recent school or college leaver. Given the choice, 58% of employers would select a candidate who is over 50. 5. Respondents who say they can’t find appropriately skilled young people are more likely to be over the age of 55, showing a potential generational divide in opinion about skills. There appears to be a generational divide between those who say they can find young people with the appropriate skills and those who can’t. Sixty-two per cent of respondents aged 55 and over who often had responsibility for recruitment said that no, they could not find a suitably skilled young person. For respondents aged 25–34 who had the same responsibility, this figure drops to 26%. 6. Few employers are engaging with the FE system. In recent years there has been a policy shift encouraging employers and the FE system to work closely together. The closing section of the survey explored whether the system is achieving this ambition. First, the survey explored whether employers are working with the FE colleges. Alarmingly, most of the employers who took part in the survey (76%) indicated that they don’t work with their local college. Second, the survey explored whether employers had worked with a government-funded Skills Broker. With less than 6% of employers saying yes, the result reinforced the view that employers are failing to engage with the FE system in the way government policy intends.