What Would a More Skilled Hampshire Mean for Our Local Economy?

Hampshire has an economy worth approximately £48.5 billion, with more than 62,000 enterprises and around 667,000 people in work. Those numbers put the scale of our local economy into perspective, but ultimately they are the combined result of thousands of individual employers and hundreds of thousands of people going to work each day.

That makes the skills of our workforce an economic issue as much as an employment or training issue. When somebody becomes a better manager, learns how to improve a process, develops stronger commercial skills or becomes confident enough to take on greater responsibility, the immediate benefit sits with that person and their employer. When the same thing happens across hundreds of businesses, the potential impact reaches much further.

Hampshire's economy is built on its businesses

There is considerable economic activity taking place across the county. Hampshire County Council reports more than 62,000 enterprises and 70,000 local business units, operating across sectors including technology, manufacturing, construction, professional services, hospitality, tourism, logistics, marine, retail and many others.

Technology alone accounts for around 53,000 jobs, 7,500 enterprises and £5.8 billion in annual GVA across Hampshire. Small and medium sized businesses are particularly important to this picture. Across the UK, SMEs account for 99.85% of private sector businesses, 60% of private sector employment and 51% of turnover.

For Hampshire, supporting local economic growth therefore has to include supporting the people working within smaller businesses. A company does not necessarily need hundreds of employees for improvements in capability to have a meaningful effect.

In fact, the opposite can often be true. If a business employs 15 people, developing one employee means investing in nearly 7% of its workforce.

What happens when one person progresses?

Consider a member of staff who has performed well and is given their first management responsibility. With the right support, they become more confident managing people, delegating work, communicating expectations and dealing with problems. The benefit is unlikely to stop with that individual.

The employees reporting to them may receive better support. A director may spend less time dealing with day to day management issues. The new manager may take ownership of work that previously sat elsewhere in the business. Their progression could also create an opportunity for another employee to take on greater responsibility. This is how relatively small investments in people can begin to spread through an organisation.

The same principle applies elsewhere. A salesperson improving their commercial capability could help win new business. Someone developing stronger digital skills could introduce a more efficient process. An employee becoming more confident with AI could reduce time spent on repetitive administration. A future leader could eventually become capable of running a department.

There is no guarantee that completing a programme will produce any particular commercial result.

What businesses can do is identify people with potential, give them relevant opportunities to develop and create an environment where they can apply what they learn.

Keeping skills and experience in Hampshire

Developing people also matters because Hampshire businesses are competing for talent.

An ambitious employee needs to be able to see what their next step could look like. If progression means leaving their current employer, valuable knowledge and experience leaves with them. If progression means leaving the county entirely, that capability is also lost from the local workforce.

Creating stronger routes from junior positions into management, leadership and specialist roles gives people more reasons to build their careers here.

It also gives smaller employers another way to compete. An SME may not always be able to match the salary, benefits or formal career structure offered by a national employer. What it can often offer is responsibility, exposure to different parts of the business, closer relationships with senior leaders and the opportunity to make a visible contribution.

Professional development can strengthen that offer. Today's junior employee could become a Hampshire SME's next manager. Today's manager could become a future director. Some will eventually start businesses of their own. A healthy local economy needs all three.

There are also people Hampshire needs to reconnect with work

Skills and employment cannot only focus on people already progressing comfortably through their careers.

In January 2026, Hampshire County Council estimated that approximately 23,000 economically inactive people in Hampshire would like to work. The county is receiving £18.7 million through the five year Connect to Work programme to support people facing barriers to employment and connect employment support more closely with the needs of local businesses. Training alone will not solve economic inactivity. The reasons people are outside the workforce can be complicated and often involve health, caring responsibilities, disability, qualifications or other personal circumstances.

But accessible development, supportive employers and clear routes into sustainable employment all contribute to a stronger labour market. Hampshire's current Get Hampshire Working Plan reflects this, bringing employers, health services, education providers, local authorities and community organisations together around employment, skills and economic participation. Businesses have a role within that wider effort.

Stronger local connections matter too

There is another part of local economic development that can easily be overlooked.

Hampshire businesses knowing other Hampshire businesses. A company in Whiteley may currently buy a service from a supplier hundreds of miles away without realising an appropriate provider exists in Fareham. A business in Winchester may be looking for expertise that already exists in Southampton. A growing employer may need a new accountant, marketing company, technology supplier, training provider, recruiter or venue. Local business communities create opportunities for those connections to happen. Networking events, workshops and shared development programmes can bring together employers who would otherwise have little reason to meet.

Sometimes the value will be a new customer. Sometimes it will be a supplier. Sometimes it will simply be two business owners sharing experience of a problem they have both encountered. Keeping more commercial relationships within Hampshire means more economic activity taking place between the businesses operating here. That is one of the reasons community sits alongside skills within our plans for Skills Hampshire.

What does 1,000 learners actually mean?

Our commitment is to support 1,000 people across Hampshire by the end of 2028, providing £300,000 worth of fully funded learner programmes. With approximately 30 hours of development for each learner, that would mean around 30,000 hours of professional development going directly into Hampshire's workforce. The number is important because it gives us something measurable to work towards. But course completions are not the outcome we are most interested in. We want to know what happens afterwards.

• Did somebody receive a promotion?

• Did a business retain an employee it might otherwise have lost?

• Did a new manager become more confident leading their team?

• Did somebody introduce a better way of working?

• Did two Hampshire businesses meet through an event and subsequently work together?

• Did an employer create another job?

Those are much harder numbers to put on a website, but they are where the real local value sits.

Three questions for Hampshire business owners

There are practical things every employer can consider, regardless of whether they have a formal training budget.

People

Who within your organisation could realistically progress over the next two years?

Someone may already be demonstrating the attitude and ability required for greater responsibility but lack the experience or confidence to make the next step.

Capability

What does your business need to become better at?

Look at where time is being lost, where growth is being restricted and where too much responsibility sits with too few people.

Community

How much of what your business purchases could be sourced within Hampshire?

It will not always make commercial sense to buy locally, but knowing more of the businesses operating around you gives you the option.

These are relatively simple questions, but collectively they affect how businesses recruit, develop, spend and grow.

1,000 individual opportunities

Thirty thousand hours of development will not change Hampshire's £48.5 billion economy on its own. But that is not really the point. It represents 1,000 individual opportunities to make somebody more capable, give someone greater responsibility, improve something within a business or help an employee take another step in their career.

If more employers across Hampshire make similar investments, the cumulative effect becomes considerably more interesting. Better managers can build better teams. More capable businesses can compete for more work. Growing companies can create employment. Employees who can see opportunities locally have more reasons to stay. Businesses that know one another have more opportunities to trade with one another.

Hampshire already has a substantial economy and a diverse business community. The opportunity is to make more of the people and businesses we already have.

A stronger local economy starts with stronger local businesses, and stronger businesses need capable people.