Late chance for employers to reverse process skills decline
25 Mar 2008
The current skills shortage in the UK process industries sector - that is chemicals, pharmaceuticals, speciality materials, polymers, rubber, fine chemicals and products made using biotechnology - is across all disciplines in the industry, both in graduate positions and for vocationally-trained staff.
COGENT, the Sector Skills Council, estimates that more than 60,000 new entrants will be needed before 2014 just for UK industry to stand still. Likewise, NEPIC, the North East Polymer Industries Cluster, estimates that almost 8,000 people will be needed to support growth in its region, in addition to the 8,000 people that industry demographics show are also needed.
According to NEPIC, there are 500 companies directly employing 40,000 people in the North East process industries, with over £7 billion of investment scheduled for the sector over the next eight to ten years.
At the peak of this investment cycle there will be up to 9,000 vocational and graduate engineers needed to design, build, commission and maintain these new operations and the existing facilities already in the region. The impact of these numbers is already being felt, with many companies reporting the poaching of their staff and delays in recruitment.
Most companies in the process industry sector still do not train their "share" of the workforce. Indeed, there is a growing reluctance by small and medium-sized companies to train people today, because the large companies simply poach the people that the smaller organisations have trained.
The industry has recently seen the stripping-out of whole shifts from shore-based chemical companies by the oil & gas sector. To work on the oil rigs level three NVQ qualifications are needed and on-shore SME process companies, having trained their operators to level three, have reported whole shifts of their personnel resigning on mass during the same week following recruitment campaigns specifically targeting their workers.
Consequently, in order to retain their highly qualified staff, many companies have reported that they will train their workers to the required level but will not issue them with certificates. This is a disgraceful state of affairs, arising simply because most companies still do not think strategically about their human resource needs in the future and putting apprentices and graduate bursaries in place to meet them.
Many senior managers, meanwhile, prefer to pass the buck or adopt the views of the executive of a major industrial company, who declared, "The skills problem is not a problem for us, we pay top whack and can buy our way out of the situation."
In the past, the UK as a whole relied on major nationalised industry — coal mining, shipbuilding, automobiles, nuclear — and the armed forces to train the vast majority of technical apprentices. Large industrial groups such as ICI, Unilever and Glaxo also trained an excess of apprentices, contributing the bulk of entrants to the sector. When these industries declined, were privatised or became ever more market focused, these routes to a career were closed.
The response at the time was to create the discredited local area TECs, which were supposed to encourage many more companies to train their workforce and create more apprentices. The problem was that these companies were not, and often are still not, prepared to pay for the basic training of their workforce.
Added to the complacency that we have experienced, there is now extra complexity in the recruitment process. As the economy has grown ever more global, ownership of many large industrial complexes has moved offshore. The facilities that remain are often cost centres and not business centres; as a result, managers do not always have the authority to participate in local area training initiatives.
Routes to employment
Furthermore, in many companies these issues are "head office" responsibilities, so local executives do not appreciate such routes to employment.
The diagram (below) shows how NEPIC works to attract new recruits into training and jobs. Unfortunately, very few companies have the resources - if any at all - to nurture these pathways.
The increasing complexity is one of the main reasons why a dedicated resource is needed to nurture the people on these pathways and ensure they have the skills we need as a sector. NEPIC invests considerable resource in this area, encouraging industry participation and collaboration to pay for educational and recruitment activities for the sector.
NEPIC soon expects to hand over some of these responsibilities to the recently created National Skills Academy for the Process Industries (NSAPI).
NSAPI is now setting up its head office at the University of Teesside, with regional units at the offices of the Regional Chemical Initiatives — NEPIC, Humber Chemical Focus, Yorkshire Chemical Focus, Chemicals NorthWest and Chemical Sciences Scotland.
NSAPI is a joint industry/government initiative with funds coming initially from both public and private sources. Its clear aim, however, is to be solely funded by industry within five years.
With the Government threatening to impose a training levy — if industry cannot get its act together — every single chemical, pharma, bioprocessing and supply-chain company must start to contribute to training.
Industry has so far contributed over £1 million to NSAPI, but every process sector company should contact NSAPI and check if their contribution is in place, as soon as possible. The Academy intends to have subscriptions on a sliding scale to ensure affordability.
In return, companies get access to a "one-stop shop" for skills development. Within the next year a company should be able to talk to the Academy about its skills requirements and receive up-to-date advice on the courses that are available to up-skill the workforce.
NSAPI aims to help bring the courses within easy reach of everyone. Eventually all such training will be quality assured to a "Gold Standard" set by COGENT. This will help companies answer the difficult questions about the competency of its staff when the Health & Safety Executive or Environmental Agency come calling.
Meanwhile, the process sector's apprenticeship schemes will be accredited and content benchmarked with the best in the in the world. NSAPI will also help companies develop courses to suit their specific needs and get accreditation for the prior knowledge and expertise of its employees.
Right now most companies have no idea where they stand on these issues. The process industries need to have access to best practice in the training and up-skilling of its workforce and it is the remit of NSAPI to ensure that this happens.
COGENT, the Sector Skills Council, estimates that more than 60,000 new entrants will be needed before 2014 just for UK industry to stand still. Likewise, NEPIC, the North East Polymer Industries Cluster, estimates that almost 8,000 people will be needed to support growth in its region, in addition to the 8,000 people that industry demographics show are also needed.
According to NEPIC, there are 500 companies directly employing 40,000 people in the North East process industries, with over £7 billion of investment scheduled for the sector over the next eight to ten years.
At the peak of this investment cycle there will be up to 9,000 vocational and graduate engineers needed to design, build, commission and maintain these new operations and the existing facilities already in the region. The impact of these numbers is already being felt, with many companies reporting the poaching of their staff and delays in recruitment.
Most companies in the process industry sector still do not train their "share" of the workforce. Indeed, there is a growing reluctance by small and medium-sized companies to train people today, because the large companies simply poach the people that the smaller organisations have trained.
The industry has recently seen the stripping-out of whole shifts from shore-based chemical companies by the oil & gas sector. To work on the oil rigs level three NVQ qualifications are needed and on-shore SME process companies, having trained their operators to level three, have reported whole shifts of their personnel resigning on mass during the same week following recruitment campaigns specifically targeting their workers.
Consequently, in order to retain their highly qualified staff, many companies have reported that they will train their workers to the required level but will not issue them with certificates. This is a disgraceful state of affairs, arising simply because most companies still do not think strategically about their human resource needs in the future and putting apprentices and graduate bursaries in place to meet them.
Many senior managers, meanwhile, prefer to pass the buck or adopt the views of the executive of a major industrial company, who declared, "The skills problem is not a problem for us, we pay top whack and can buy our way out of the situation."
In the past, the UK as a whole relied on major nationalised industry — coal mining, shipbuilding, automobiles, nuclear — and the armed forces to train the vast majority of technical apprentices. Large industrial groups such as ICI, Unilever and Glaxo also trained an excess of apprentices, contributing the bulk of entrants to the sector. When these industries declined, were privatised or became ever more market focused, these routes to a career were closed.
The response at the time was to create the discredited local area TECs, which were supposed to encourage many more companies to train their workforce and create more apprentices. The problem was that these companies were not, and often are still not, prepared to pay for the basic training of their workforce.
Added to the complacency that we have experienced, there is now extra complexity in the recruitment process. As the economy has grown ever more global, ownership of many large industrial complexes has moved offshore. The facilities that remain are often cost centres and not business centres; as a result, managers do not always have the authority to participate in local area training initiatives.
Routes to employment
Furthermore, in many companies these issues are "head office" responsibilities, so local executives do not appreciate such routes to employment.
The diagram (below) shows how NEPIC works to attract new recruits into training and jobs. Unfortunately, very few companies have the resources - if any at all - to nurture these pathways.
The increasing complexity is one of the main reasons why a dedicated resource is needed to nurture the people on these pathways and ensure they have the skills we need as a sector. NEPIC invests considerable resource in this area, encouraging industry participation and collaboration to pay for educational and recruitment activities for the sector.
NEPIC soon expects to hand over some of these responsibilities to the recently created National Skills Academy for the Process Industries (NSAPI).
NSAPI is now setting up its head office at the University of Teesside, with regional units at the offices of the Regional Chemical Initiatives — NEPIC, Humber Chemical Focus, Yorkshire Chemical Focus, Chemicals NorthWest and Chemical Sciences Scotland.
NSAPI is a joint industry/government initiative with funds coming initially from both public and private sources. Its clear aim, however, is to be solely funded by industry within five years.
With the Government threatening to impose a training levy — if industry cannot get its act together — every single chemical, pharma, bioprocessing and supply-chain company must start to contribute to training.
Industry has so far contributed over £1 million to NSAPI, but every process sector company should contact NSAPI and check if their contribution is in place, as soon as possible. The Academy intends to have subscriptions on a sliding scale to ensure affordability.
In return, companies get access to a "one-stop shop" for skills development. Within the next year a company should be able to talk to the Academy about its skills requirements and receive up-to-date advice on the courses that are available to up-skill the workforce.
NSAPI aims to help bring the courses within easy reach of everyone. Eventually all such training will be quality assured to a "Gold Standard" set by COGENT. This will help companies answer the difficult questions about the competency of its staff when the Health & Safety Executive or Environmental Agency come calling.
Meanwhile, the process sector's apprenticeship schemes will be accredited and content benchmarked with the best in the in the world. NSAPI will also help companies develop courses to suit their specific needs and get accreditation for the prior knowledge and expertise of its employees.
Right now most companies have no idea where they stand on these issues. The process industries need to have access to best practice in the training and up-skilling of its workforce and it is the remit of NSAPI to ensure that this happens.
