Comment & Analysis
Everyone falls into habits when they’ve been doing their job for a fair amount of time. I’ve gotten into the routine of finishing interviews with business leaders in engineering and manufacturing by asking the same question: namely, what do they consider to be the biggest single threat or challenge to their organisation over the course of the year ahead?
This habit only dawned on me when I realised I was hearing the same answer time and time again. The response, more often than not, is a moan about skills shortages. “We can’t find the right people. We spend most of our time trying to recruit. The situation is getting worse.” Those are comments I’ve typed dozens of times now.
The discussions also shed some light on where industry thinks the blame lies for this dire situation. There are frequent criticisms about the performance of academia. Teachers don’t understand engineering. Careers officers never suggest it as a worthy prospect. And university courses are too theory-based, leading to high drop-out levels. The conversations are rarely inward looking, though – industry never seems to blame industry for skills shortages.
The truth is, at least in part, that industry was guilty of taking its eye off the ball for a long period when it comes to training. Just look at all the apprenticeship and graduate recruitment schemes that were deemed too expensive in the 1980s and 1990s, and quietly shelved. Firms began to rely on poaching suitable candidates that had been trained elsewhere. It was easier to moan about skills shortages, rather than contribute to a solution themselves.
That, fortunately, has changed. Big companies such as Network Rail and Jaguar Land Rover now commit millions of pounds each year to bringing through young talent, either on work experience placements, apprenticeship schemes or structured graduate programmes. There has been an overdue realisation at some of these major players in the engineering and manufacturing sectors that academia cannot carry the burden of skills shortages alone.
That shift in attitudes was highlighted by a letter sent last month to a national newspaper by Nicholas Pollard, chief executive of Balfour Beatty. Pollard was urging other FTSE 350 business leaders to join his company, and an impressive line-up of others, which had signed up to the 5% Club, an initiative to make sure that within five years 5% of employees are in an apprenticeship, or are sponsored students or graduates, with their totals declared in their annual reports.
Other firms already in the 5% Club include Qinetiq, Atkins, Airbus, Babcock, MBDA, Renishaw – it’s a roll-call of engineering excellence.
In addition to his call to arms, the Balfour Beatty boss put forward a sensible-sounding suggestion. He reckoned that government should help the skills cause by insisting that any public-sector contracts are only available to companies that are signed up to the 5% Club. Controversial, but do-able.
The engineering and manufacturing sector has been crying out for greater commitment from business to training and development of young engineers, and there are now clear signs that the message has been heard and is being acted upon. Government, academia and industry must continue to work together to plug gaps and to help ease the situation.
As for me, I will shake the habit of concluding interviews by allowing companies to talk about skills shortages as a problem. Instead, I will ask what they themselves are doing to help find solutions.