How do we solve the Catch 22 of Skills?

Employers are frustrated that young people emerging from education don’t have the skills they are looking for. Young people emerging from education are keen to work but can’t get jobs because they don’t have the skills employers are looking for. A classic Catch 22 conundrum – how do we fix this?

Last month the IET published a skills survey that was launched at a joint event with Student Energy, who were presenting a report of their own on young people entering the energy transition labour market. The lively debate that took place is available to view. The organisations spoke respectively to employers and students both groups expressing a clear desire for more and better training to help bridge the gap between formal education and employment, and for career progression into new roles or to cover new responsibilities.  

Apprenticeships, graduate programmes, and internships are a great way to receive practical training, but these programmes are only available to a minority, and often those working for larger organisation.

How do we find different ways to bridge this gap? Could accessible online learning be an acceptable alternative that employers would consider? Perhaps young engineers already have the skills, but they are not presenting them in the right way because they don’t know how?

If engineers can’t find a solution to this, I don’t know who can – what are your thoughts?

Parents
  • Another feeling I have about this, which I think you allude to Alex, is that we are suffering from the loss of big employers in the UK across all engineering sectors (including e.g. building trades). Training staff is a big overhead in the requirement to have supporting staff, and the move from big employers to SMEs (which was well on the way when I started my career in the late 1970s) makes it very challenging for the most well meaning employer to take trainees / apprentices on (whether school leavers or graduates).

    When I was involved in a local manufacturers' group we talked about collaborating so that apprentices / trainees could rotate around different companies in their training, just as they would rotate around different departments in "big company" schemes. Nothing (as far as I know) ever came of it, because it hit the brick wall of who was actually going to administer this. Probably the only organisations that could are training providers, i.e. FE/HE institutions, but they don't usually have the infrastructure to do so. However if this could be made to work it could be really good, not just because it would allow training to take place with minimal risk / overhead to each individual employer, but also because it would mean the trainee would learn that there is more than one way to work by seeing several different organisations' approaches. 

    I have always thought that we lag far, far behind other professions for this, I guess here I'm primarily thinking of post-graduate training. I cannot think of another profession (law, teaching, medicine, accountancy) where you do your degree and that's it - it's up to you to work out what you are supposed to do next. They all have required post graduate training and further qualifications, and so are set up to provide this. Even in the case where, particularly in law or accountancy, the individual employers are quite or very small organisations. What can we learn form these?

    Very good and important point. I'm having various bits of building work done on our house at the moment, and I've been chatting to the various companies we're using about this subject over the last year or so. At present not one of them has a single apprentice / trainee, they all say they'd like to, but they just can't afford it. And they all know they are getting older and their skills are getting lost...

    (Incidentally, I'm delighted to say that the company I work for has had a graduate intake programme this year! And frankly I don't particularly care what skills they come in with as long as they are keen to learn and develop - which they are.) 

    Thanks,

    Andy

Reply
  • Another feeling I have about this, which I think you allude to Alex, is that we are suffering from the loss of big employers in the UK across all engineering sectors (including e.g. building trades). Training staff is a big overhead in the requirement to have supporting staff, and the move from big employers to SMEs (which was well on the way when I started my career in the late 1970s) makes it very challenging for the most well meaning employer to take trainees / apprentices on (whether school leavers or graduates).

    When I was involved in a local manufacturers' group we talked about collaborating so that apprentices / trainees could rotate around different companies in their training, just as they would rotate around different departments in "big company" schemes. Nothing (as far as I know) ever came of it, because it hit the brick wall of who was actually going to administer this. Probably the only organisations that could are training providers, i.e. FE/HE institutions, but they don't usually have the infrastructure to do so. However if this could be made to work it could be really good, not just because it would allow training to take place with minimal risk / overhead to each individual employer, but also because it would mean the trainee would learn that there is more than one way to work by seeing several different organisations' approaches. 

    I have always thought that we lag far, far behind other professions for this, I guess here I'm primarily thinking of post-graduate training. I cannot think of another profession (law, teaching, medicine, accountancy) where you do your degree and that's it - it's up to you to work out what you are supposed to do next. They all have required post graduate training and further qualifications, and so are set up to provide this. Even in the case where, particularly in law or accountancy, the individual employers are quite or very small organisations. What can we learn form these?

    Very good and important point. I'm having various bits of building work done on our house at the moment, and I've been chatting to the various companies we're using about this subject over the last year or so. At present not one of them has a single apprentice / trainee, they all say they'd like to, but they just can't afford it. And they all know they are getting older and their skills are getting lost...

    (Incidentally, I'm delighted to say that the company I work for has had a graduate intake programme this year! And frankly I don't particularly care what skills they come in with as long as they are keen to learn and develop - which they are.) 

    Thanks,

    Andy

Children
  • I think smaller organisations in the UK are overwhelmed by the perceived (or real) burden of taking on apprentices which has resulted in a huge amount (over £2bn) of unspent apprenticeship levy being returned to government. If more help could be given to demystify or support companies to take the leap and offer roles to apprentices that would be fantastic. Likewise, the unspent levy could be repurposed to upskill or reskill emerging graduates, or those who are established in the workforce. I agree with you too though Andy - I would rather hire someone with the right attitude and approach who might not have exactly the ideal qualifications, than not.