The ability to attract and retain people with the right skills is now a major concern for many organisations in the maintenance engineering sector. A collaborative approach to raise the profile of the sector and build a skills pipeline could be transformative.
Attracting and retaining talent has become the biggest challenge in the maintenance engineering sector, according to the 2024 Maintenance Engineering Report, produced by RS in partnership with the* *Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).
Half of the professionals surveyed (50%) say this is a challenge for them – increasing from 47 per cent the previous year – and more than one in three (37%) now rate it as the single biggest issue they face. Larger organisations are even more concerned, with 42 per cent ranking it as their main challenge.
Richard Jeffers, Solutions and Technical Director at RS, points out that this has always been an issue for those in the maintenance and engineering space. “I’m into my third decade of work and that conversation about talent has been going on for my entire career, so it’s not a new problem,” he says. “It’s a continuation of an existing problem, and it was exacerbated by the move away from apprenticeships and towards degrees.
“Combined with the financial crisis in 2008, many companies backed off apprenticeships quite severely and that’s now impacting the middle ranks of industry,” he adds. “You just want to get the right people in your business in any technical role, and every company has the same challenge.”
Jamie Hughes, Plant Manager at life sciences business Ecolab, is all too aware of the challenges around skills. He points out the difference between the skill levels of younger people entering the market and older professionals.
“A 50-year-old who did an apprenticeship and has a certain level of experience is reasonably attractive,” he says. “But with the younger generation, it’s much more degree-based in terms of qualification, and less craft-based. We get a lot of people who classify themselves as engineers through qualifications, but I wouldn’t necessarily class them as engineers in terms of practical application.”
Alongside this, there are concerns over the automation skills required to make the most of new technology. “We have a lot of experience, so we’re doing OK on the maintenance side from a mechanical and electrical perspective,” says Hughes. “But automation-wise, as the technology we bring in becomes much more complex, we struggle.
“We have a growing gap between the equipment and our ability to execute in-depth, particularly around fault-finding and optimisation of the equipment.” The business is taking steps to address this, he says, but this takes time to come to fruition.
Collective action
The talent issue requires industry and education providers to work together to raise awareness of engineering as a profession, believes Lydia Amarquaye, Education and Skills Policy Lead at IMechE. “A lot of young people still don’t really understand what engineering is,” she says.
“There’s a lot more we can do in terms of curriculum reform and bringing engineering into the classroom. When we talk about STEM more widely, science, technology and maths have a place in the curriculum, but engineering itself isn’t so clear.” Showcasing what engineering is and using role models young people can relate to can also help raise awareness, she adds.
Apprenticeships are part of the mix, too. “These are starting to be spoken about within school settings, so making more people aware that university isn’t the only route forward,” says Amarquaye. “We’re encouraging our members to consider how they can be involved in apprenticeship design, to ensure those courses meet their workforce needs.”
This is the approach Ecolab has taken. “We bring in apprentices and build them ourselves,” says Hughes. “Over the last few years, I’ve had to supplement the apprenticeship programmes with more rigorous technical skills. I send all my apprentices on external mechanical-electrical training courses because I don’t feel as though those apprenticeships have the right level of technical skills.”
Other bodies must also play their part, believes Amarquaye. “As the engineering community, we’ve spoken about the government developing a workforce strategy,” she says. “That would mean that where they see key areas for growth there should be a plan in place, not just for the financial investment, but investment in people as well.”
University challenge
Universities also need to ensure students are exposed to different parts of the profession so that when they enter the world of work, they have basic skills that can be developed by employers. “When graduates come in, they’re expected to design and develop materials, processes and products, but if they don’t have the base understanding of machine capabilities that slows down the process or means it’s not as smooth as it could be,” says Amarquaye.
“Graduate schemes allow people to move around a business to understand how everything fits together,” she adds. “Now we’re working back and thinking about university courses and how we can bring in cross-disciplinary work within projects, so that graduates have better exposure to the concept of an idea, and how you then develop and test that.
“Bringing those skills into universities means that when graduates go into the workplace, they know that they’re working as part of a team and that there are people within the business they can speak to in order to make decisions.”
But employers themselves need to raise their game, she adds. “Industry needs to take responsibility for training, because people still need the specialisation when they join the workforce. Industry needs to help the young person develop from a graduate with a broad skillset to more specific skills for their particular industry.”
For more insight and opinion on the 2024 Maintenance Engineering Report, click here.
