PROVIDING YOUR COMPANY WITH THE SKILLED WORKFORCE IT NEEDS

Nov 27 2007 by Karen McLauchlan, Evening Gazette

THE modern engineering sector is highly competitive when it comes to recruiting and keeping a suitably skilled workforce, particularly when workers are being lured out of the Tees Valley region with the promise of higher wages and longer contracts.

There are now literally thousands of vacancies and opportunities for Tees Valley workers, not just across the UK but also abroad.

Their reputation for high-quality work is making the region’s workforce a valuable commodity and we need to adopt a proactive stance towards keeping them here. But how exactly do we do that?

I do not believe it is simply a case of increasing wages. We need to adopt a longer-term strategy, starting from the ground up.

Our first step should be to try to engage more with the region’s young people, capturing their interest and raising awareness of the variety of careers that are available.

The Tees Valley Engineering Partnership is already working with a number of local firms to deploy engineers into the region’s schools and colleges and build relationships with students.

Next month the partnership is also hosting its annual Christmas Lecture, designed to introduce engineering careers in a fun and interactive way.

Once young people decide to take on an engineering career, we must do the best we can to ensure they get the skills and hands-on experience they need.

In the Tees Valley we are lucky enough to have four CoVE (Centre of Vocational Excellence) centres which cover engineering and its related disciplines and we must make the most of them.

In terms of plugging the skills gap in the shorter term, cross skilling can be a great option.

Taking existing employees, or alternatively recruiting individuals from other disciplines and retraining, is both efficient and effective.

This is already working really well with a number of ex-forces personnel and the TVEP will shortly be running a series of specialist workshops, focusing on helping forces personnel match their practical skills to those being sought by the engineering industry.

The real message here is that while foreign labour undoubtedly has its place in the Tees Valley engineering sector, we can all work together to ensure a least some local jobs go to local people.