Coming up short

The collective voice of the engineering industry repeatedly calls for the same thing: roughly twice the number of engineers that the UK currently manages to produce.

Speaking prior to the launch of a parliamentary event in September, Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) chief executive Nigel Fine said that the UK needs 87,000 new engineers each year for the next decade.

However, finding such numbers has been a major problem for the industry in recent years.

To help alleviate this issue, the government recently launched a £30 million fund designed to help swell the supply of engineers, encourage more women into the sector and address engineering skills shortages in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Engineering is for everyone, wherever they are – that’s what the message needs to be

IET policy advisor Stephanie Fernandes

Despite this fund, and a number of skills initiatives such as ‘Tomorrow’s Engineers’ and the ‘Your Life’ campaign, which focuses on encouraging young women to study Science and Maths, the outlook still feels rather bleak.

A major problem, according to the IET’s annual ‘Skills & Demand in Industry’ survey, is confidence – namely the growing inconsistency between the skills employers expect new engineers and technicians to have and the skills they actually possess.

According to the survey, the skills gap among new recruits has increased for the ninth year running, with 44% of employers stating that engineering, IT and technical recruits do not meet reasonable expectations for levels of skill (see graph below).

Worryingly, almost 40% of the 400 engineering and IT companies surveyed by the IET said that new engineers have not met their needs, in what continues to be a decline in confidence.

How, therefore, can the engineering industry, which is crying out for around double the amount of recruits it currently generates, turn around this alarming trend?

For some, a simple solution should be implemented to deal with the issue of both inadequately trained engineers and workforce shortages.

“We need to bring back some of the missing engineers and give them a small amount of development and training to bolster their existing skill and experience,” says chartered engineer and member of the IET Harry Cather.

Cather says that there is an added advantage to reinstating the missing workers – engineers that have pursued careers in other fields such as banking - because more mature employees tend to bring greater commitment to their job than those fresh from college and university.

However, Cather’s point does not tackle the issue raised by Fine, and much of the wider engineering community, that the UK needs over 80,000 new engineers a year for the next ten years.

In response to this need, many commentators have called upon better diversification within engineering.

For many, this type of modernisation could be the catalyst that tips the balance and breaks the back of the industry’s ongoing skills shortage.

One of the key drivers in delivering better engineering diversity is increasing the number of women that are both interested in engineering and qualified to work in the profession.

Unfortunately, figures from the IET survey suggest that 43% of employers are not taking any specific action to improve diversity within their workforce.

Furthermore, industry figures also suggest that the proportion of the engineering workforce that is female is just 6%, a one percent decline on IET ‘Skills & Demand’ statistics released in 2013.

Essentially, the problem lies with the perception of engineering at the curricular level, claims Stephanie Fernandes, principle policy advisor to education and skills at the IET.

“In the last 10 years especially, engineering has really suffered. Even STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) graduates have been attracted to city jobs like banking, rather than engineering,” Fernandes says.

According to the IET survey, only 31% of respondents thought that the perception of engineering among young people was positive, while 31% said it was negative and a further 33% were neutral.

In order to combat these issues, UK politicians have pledged to get more engineering companies into local schools and encourage employers to offer young people work experience opportunities and provide them with access to better information about the variety of career choices within the engineering and technology sector.

Last month, a parliamentary reception hosted by the IET brought together a number of MPs from different constituencies to encourage them to tackle the skills shortage issue head-on.

For Fernandes, there are a number of ways MPs can actively help boost interest in engineering.

“The MPs can be advocates themselves and go out into schools and the community and talk directly about careers in engineering with school students,” Fernandes says.

“MPs could [also] challenge local employers about how much they do engage in schools, and as MPs engage in a lot of industry visits, it presents them with the opportunity to broach the subject and encourage employers to work more closely with schools.”

Aligned to this pledge, is a need for more robust motivation.

“Young learners need to be inspired by engineering,” Fernandes says.

“Inspiration is the first step in a young person’s career and if they aren’t inspired, or don’t have the belief from an early age, then it is unlikely they will make the effort to forge a career in engineering.”

The IET wants to use MPs as a means of promoting engineering across a far broader spectrum, removing some of the barriers potential new recruits may face.

“MPs are a powerful tool in getting across to the country that we need more engineers and that it’s not just a profession that happens in small pockets of the UK,” Fernandes says.

“Engineering is for everyone, wherever they are – that’s what the message needs to be.”