How to retain your engineering talent

As the owner manager of an engineering business for the past 15 years, I have come to appreciate the complexities of my role and my company. OCS has a great reputation within industry, a highly skilled, highly motivated and loyal workforce but, as an engineering company, recruitment proves to be one of our most testing issues and, with an ageing skills base, will continue to try us until we are able to draft in younger engineering talent.

Semta, the sector skills council for science, engineering and manufacturing technologies, recently published research showing that 30,000 skilled engineers are needed in the UK each year until 2016, to fill the gap of highly skilled workers reaching retirement.

My argument is that qualifying engineers see better opportunities elsewhere and that the dynamics of our SME-led economy do not encourage in-practice development to the high levels of specialisation and skill that are needed.

One key characteristic is the need to employ people who can contribute to the business within a short time frame. Recruitment is one of the riskiest areas for an SME and there is often too little commercial leeway or momentum to allow a new employee any appreciable time to become contributory. The cost of training can be prohibitively expensive, the pressures to produce are significant, and the consequences of misjudging a prospective employee’s ability are potentially catastrophic.

OCS numbers 20 employees, has a good trading history and a defined growth strategy. Since 1995 we have had just three engineers leave our employment. This low staff turnover is a characteristic of which we are proud and carries many advantages to us and to our clients.

However, one of the side issues that our staff retention record presents is that as our workforce gets older each year, we will need to grow if we are to draft in younger engineering talent. We have a need, as a business, and an obligation, as a knowledge bank, to educate young engineers so that our skills will be available in the future.

Our experience working with some of the major players within the paper, packaging and converting industries, such as Tullis Russel, Voith and API Laminates, has led to the same observation. The people we deal with day-to-day have been in the industry for a similar period of time and there are not enough younger engineers rising through the ranks.

Engineering presents a myriad of opportunities. It sets interesting and stimulating challenges and encourages expansive thinking. So, why is it not better appreciated by management professionals or potential recruits and why is it increasingly difficult to find the talent we need?

Wrong impressions

There is a problem with the public perception of engineers. Many other industrial sectors value the attributes of science and engineering graduates, not least for their problem-solving abilities, and we need to raise the reputation of an engineering career to that of a doctor or lawyer, in order to retain the brightest and best within our own industry.

The name ‘engineer’ is a catchall description for a variety of significantly different occupations and abilities that stretch from household names, such as Brunel or Stevenson, to the jobbing engineer that will repair your washing machine. The difficulty with a generic description is that it conjures up the blue collar rather than the professional, resulting in the industry losing much of the best available talent to better marketed, competing professions.

It is essential therefore that the profession is better understood by a wider audience. These are jobs with high level technical skills - well paid, varied and truly rewarding jobs with the security of more demand than supply. A greater awareness of this will inevitably lead to engineering careers being accorded the attraction and social value they deserve.

If both the general public and prospective graduates can be encouraged to appreciation of the intellectual rigour and responsibility engineering demands, then it will inevitably be valued much more highly.

We need to counter declining numbers pursuing careers in this excellent industrial sector by actively promoting the rewards and opportunities that engineering offers and by encouraging a businesses culture that invests in long-term skills growth.

Engineering careers should feel, and be, more widely recognised - there might then be more of them.

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and may not be shared by this publication.