Acuity Training carried out a survey questioning 1,000 UK office workers on their confidence in using Microsoft Office tools. This is to ascertain whether there is a skills gap in Microsoft Office training by exploring factors such as region.

The survey found that almost half (49%) of office workers have never received Microsoft Office training in their current workplace. And only 12% of those questioned receive regular training.

Furthermore, 72% of those surveyed agree that they would benefit from receiving more Microsoft Office software training.

Looking at the regional data, the poll revealed that 59% of South East employees have never received any Microsoft training, this is the most out of all the regions investigated in the survey.

Acuity Training also discovered that over half of Londoners (58%) received Microsoft training, and 26% do so regularly. Conversely, Yorkshire and the Humber was the region that was least likely to receive regular Microsoft training at just 4%!

Employees in Northern Ireland believe they would benefit very much from receiving Microsoft training at 36%. On the other hand, those in East Anglia are most likely to say they think they don’t need any further training.

From exploring confidence using different Microsoft products there were mixed results. For example, the region most likely to feel very confident using Exel was East Anglia at just under a quarter (23%).

On the other hand, the UK area was most likely to respond that they feel very unconfident using the application was the North West.

Additionally, when investigating confidence using Microsoft Outlook, Wales was the region that was most likely to answer that they felt very confident using the tool at just over a third (35%).

Conversely, the North West was again the area that answered the most that they felt very unconfident using Outlook.

UK office workers were also asked to put their skills into practice and explain what the correct formula is for the ‘Average’ calculation in Excel. North West employees were those who got it wrong the most, and also 44% (the most of all other regions) admitted they don’t know how to do this calculation.