Higher engineering skills: the challenge for the North-East

Sep 24 2007 The Journal

OF all the challenges North-East manufacturing and engineering companies face the recruitment and retention of higher skilled engineers is the most pressing. As international competition intensifies and other factors come into play the requirement to take action is fast becoming a necessity.

Our development agency, One NorthEast, recognised the importance of this issue and asked EEF Northern to carry out research on the skills shortage situation. EEF being regarded as a major voice of engineering and manufacturing industries.

In this article, ALAN HALL director of EEF Northern uses some of the findings from this research and attempts to explain why these skill shortages have come about and the sort of actions needed by us all to ensure we have a plentiful supply of highly skilled engineers in the future.

The research indicated there is a significant shortage of highly skilled engineers across a number of sectors and engineering disciplines.

This was best articulated when one leading recruitment agency used the expression of “We are all fishing for the same engineers – but in an ever decreasing pond”, when describing the overall labour market, indicating a growing concern over the future of a skilled workforce.

Notably, design engineers and project managers were in particular high demand.

So what is fuelling these skills shortages?

The North-East is enjoying a good year in the manufacturing sector; this is resulting in growth and expansion.

In addition to rapidly evolving competition from China and India that has caused some of our regional companies to further innovate and to improve their productivity as we increasingly have to compete on a global basis.

Our regional companies are producing quality products using both a high level of product integrity and a high degree of intellectual property. This is viewed as setting them apart from other parts of the UK and from competing countries.

The consequence for these companies is a continued need for highly complex processes and systems. Our company leaders told us they are looking to improve their design capabilities; and that improvement must be continuous in order to remain competitive.

Therefore, it follows that these companies need highly skilled, graduate calibre engineers.

The situation is further exacerbated by an ageing population in that the region of existing engineers and there are too few students being attracted into engineering degree courses.

So what can we do about these shortages?

In the short term, the solutions to these skill shortages are going to be largely determined by the actions of the employers working within the current marketplace conditions.

It is the employer who holds the key to the issue of attraction and retention of engineers to the region. The actions of employers will determine how successful the region will be in this task. Supporting organisations have an important part to play in the task but it will be largely up to the employers to show a great deal of enlightened self interest to create the conditions that will grow, retain and bring engineers into our region.

However the employers can be helped in these areas and supported by our regional agencies.

The EEF believes that there a number of interventions that will have a positive effect on the region’s ability to attract and retain these much sought after engineers. These can be summarised on five broad fronts:

To continue to attract and retain distant engineers into our region is never going to be easy. In the short term we need to promote our region as a place to live and work through the regions’ “passionate people, passionate places” strategy and campaign. We need to exploit the potential of the web in selling our message further afield.

Our longer term strategies around raising the profit and growth of our science and knowledge based industries are going to prove important to the attraction of these engineers.

Addressing the issue of graduates leaving the region – “the leaky pipe”. This includes use of graduate/business web-sites; better business engagement; and making the transition from graduate to fully effective team member a shorter process. The regions’ universities will play a critical role here and are already working closely with One NorthEast to increase the number of graduates stating in the region.

Continuing to grow and develop our own talent on a number of skill levels. Including foundation degrees, management and leadership upskilling.

Making every effort to encourage more young people to think of engineering as a bright and rewarding career. Ideas include encouraging women into engineering and working with the regions’ schools (teachers, parents and young people) to promote exciting engineering opportunities.

For the North-East to continue to be at the forefront of manufacturing these important skills issues have to be addressed there is no time to lose. This is a business critical issue.