Businesses in the UK should be more visionary in their approach in order to raise level of employment in the country, according to a report.

The report by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) says there are now too few jobs for UK graduates and there is a widening gap between the supply of high-level workers and jobs for them.

The report calls on businesses to show more vision and be more ambitious to offer highly skilled jobs. It says targets for the year 2020 for raising the skills of those with low or intermediate skills will not be met.

Management and leadership in the UK have come in for sharp criticism in the report. It points out that there are many managers in the UK who are not well qualified and who do not apply accepted management practices.

Economic performance will only improve if the situation on the management and leadership front improves in the UK the report says.

The UKCES, which is an independent body set up by the government to improve employment and skills, has, in the report, focused on how likely the UK is to meet specific targets for the year 2020.

The targets cited in the report are based on recommendations by a major report on skills written by Lord Letich at the end of 2006.

Lord Leitch also said 95 per cent of the UK population should have functional literacy and numeracy skills by 2020.

The UK is expected to meet only the target for literacy, according to the UKCES.

The report goes on to say that the proportion of jobs that call for higher level skills has been increasing while the proportion requiring low or no qualification has been on the decline.

With regard to high skills, the report says that the growth in the number of people possessing high skills significantly exceeded the growth in high skill jobs, with an increase in overqualified staff particularly graduates.

The report calls for investment in raising the ambitions of employers as well as skills supply. It says the UK has too few high performance work places.

To change this, investment should be made in raising the ambitions of employers as well, the report recommends. 

On the overall UK skills profile, the report says that while the overall skills profile is improving over time, too many people are in danger of being left behind. It says other countries are improving and some of them faster.

The commission, set up by the government to advise it on its employment and skills strategies and targets, calls for simplification of the 'skills and employment landscape' that labour has developed.

It says the system of teaching skills and matching them with employment needs must be more responsive to public demand and employers need to be encouraged to be more ambitious about what they produce.