A recent survey from the Adecco Institute that maps out demographic business trends in Europe reveals that the UK spent its second year at the top of the Demographic Fitness Index.

The Demographic Fitness Survey 2007 which sampled over 500 interviews per country (total of 2,506 interviews with companies of all sizes in the five major European economies including Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and Spain) took into account how firms are preparing across five areas:

• Career management
• Lifelong learning
• Health
• Knowledge
• Age diversity management

Key findings:

• While the UK leads the rest of Europe in most fields, it drops points on health management at work. The UK scored lowest of all European companies, offering on average just 2.9 of the 9 main 'health promotion tools' identified by the Institute. UK firms are notably worst at offering pre-employment medical check-ups, and are also significantly worse at offering regular health checks
• UK firms excel at career management and in creating entirely new positions to help employees get on in their career - 60% of UK firms confirm that they practice this - more than any other European country
• Lifelong learning - UK companies offer more learning tools to their employees
• UK employees are, on average, offered around 5.8 of the 8 main learning tools identified by the Adecco Institute. Businesses here are particularly adept at offering workplace based training initiatives (96%) and technical skills training (86%)
• UK firms lead the pack on diversity management. 93% of UK firms offer equal opportunities for all age groups, and perform better than their European counterparts on diversity overall  

Rene Schuster, Adecco UK Group CEO, comments:
“While there is a slight slip in the UK’s overall performance in the survey from last year, it is exciting to see that UK business again leads the way in preparation for the challenge of an ever changing workforce demographic. The overall findings of the survey suggest that there is work still to be done to prepare Europe for the challenge of an ageing and shrinking workforce, but we are seeing more and more companies taking steps to address this.”