Talking Point: Closing the gap
Challenges facing manufacturers may come and go but the industry still needs to get around the constant skills gap, writes Brandauer's Rowan Crozier.
Challenges come and go in manufacturing and to be honest we've had our fair share over the last decade.
First up was the fallout from the major closures of Agco, LDV, Peugeot and MG Rover followed closely by the stampede of the emerging superpowers from the sub continent and the Far East, who brought with them labour costs that had to be seen to be believed. There was also the small matter of a major global recession to contend with too.
Throughout this decade of change, one challenge has remained constant and, now more than ever, is becoming the greatest threat to the growth of UK manufacturing.
It will come as no surprise to learn this significant obstacle is skills. Industry has struggled for some time to attract the next generation of engineers and toolmakers, yet the problem has now reached a different end of the scale.
A combination of an ageing workforce and people being lost to different sectors as a result of the recession has left manufacturing teetering on what could potentially be the biggest skills shortage in its history.
Both Brandauer and the other member companies that make up the Midlands Assembly Network (MAN) regularly report difficulties in identifying apprentices and filling job vacancies, many of which are for skilled personnel.
This is proving costly both in terms of money and time spent recruiting and in having to delay orders while the right staff are found and integrated into the team.
So how can we overcome this difficulty? Let's take the pipeline of young talent first. Apprenticeships still remain the most likely way of developing future engineers but they no longer seem to have the same effect as they used to.
Our current MD, David Spears, is the perfect example of how it can work having progressed from the shopfloor to head a business with a £9m turnover.
Today, we are increasingly finding that the courses our apprentices go on are not structured in a way that gives them the practical and commercial skills needed to benefit our business.
This is something that both education and manufacturing need to face up to and take action to develop a solution.
Closer links between the two parties is a start. There then needs to be a mechanism where engineering companies actively dedicate time to help fine tune the 'learning'... this may take a change in mindset but would certainly be of benefit long-term.
Members of MAN have also agreed to an inter-training scheme for their current apprentices. This means that each young person spends time at their employer and also at one or two other companies, providing access to different skills and different manufacturing disciplines. Brandauer, Westley Engineering and Barkley Plastics are the first to trail this approach.
Other issues we need to address is creating a more positive image of the industry and a way to stop the bigger companies cherry picking our apprentices when they come through the system.
Seventy-five per cent of our qualified apprentices leave to work for the big ‘Midlands’ employers, such as JLR, Goodrich and TRW. This is extremely frustrating. We put in the hard work and investment in getting them to a level where they can positively improve our business and then lose them to the lure of the big name.
There is no magic answer in tackling the ageing demographic answer, more a myriad of different approaches that need to be developed and developed quickly.
Mature apprenticeship schemes should certainly be looked at, giving people the opportunity to re-train if changing career or suffering the cruel blow of redundancy. More leadership and training should also be made available for middle management to help develop technical skills that can then be cascaded down the workforce.
Government support and, in particular financial subsidies, need to be available to manufacturers committed to solving the skills shortage. This should help underpin the work that needs to be done to make apprenticeships more relevant and to assist in transferring technical skills that could otherwise be lost forever.
By the same token, companies need to play their part, step forward and, instead of moaning about the situation, do something proactive to fix it.
Rowan Crozier is the sales and marketing director at manufacturing company Brandauer.
