Peter Brooks said:

Is this shortage of people willing to join these professions, due to fear of being zapped?

My personal suspicion is that it's more due to the shortage of medium / large companies that can cope with taking on apprentices. Despite the various initiatives to promote apprenticeships in recent years it's hard to see how they can succeed without large enough employers who can devote sufficient resources to supervising / training them.

Hello Andy:

I am well aware of the hollowing out of industry in the 1970's and the out-sourcing of (for example machine shops) functions to small "village" operations outside (example) Cambridge. One of my wife's family owned and operated such a one man village machine shop.

The hollowing out process is still going on with the Steel works in Wales, which will effectively eliminate the production of steel from iron ore and only uses "out sourced" pig iron.

I saw an article the other day that claimed if you remove assets created by "The City" the rest of the country becomes a 3rd rate country like Cuba. 

It is not a good view from here!

Peter 

Hello Andy: You mentioned being a STEM ambassador at schools. I assume this was an unpaid volunteer position!  Why did you do this?

I bring this question up because there appears to be a stigma associated with volunteering (not being paid) for helping out, in the UK at this time.

Fully retired engineers need to have a purpose in their lives and should be a good source for volunteers. I personally volunteered a couple days a week for over 15 years in our local hospital and learned a lot.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Peter Brooks said:

I assume this was an unpaid volunteer position! 

Very much so - to the extent that I spent quite a bit of my own money on tools and equipment! Ok, here's the story, a few of us got together to enter Robot Wars (BattleBots in the US) in the late '90s, when it was huge on TV, and because we got known locally we got invited to take our "robot" into schools to talk about it. That led onto helping a school with their robot project, which then led us into finding out about a school spin-off (not televised) of Robot Wars which we decided to enter with our own children (who went to a very relaxed primary / elementary school). And next thing we knew we were running an engineering club there which was great fun. I ended up designing and running several inter-school challenges, working very closely with our regional STEM Ambassador co-ordinator.

I stopped mainly because more and more people (mostly ex-teachers) started doing the same thing professionally, and to be honest I got fed up doing something for free when the person next to me, doing the same thing, was being paid for it. Also, quite a lot of what I did was IET funded, however the IET decided to stop funding individual projects and target national activities instead (fair enough). Plus I really enjoyed working with 5-13 year olds, and 16-18 year olds, but found myself doing several sessions with the group in between who are - as any teacher will agree - challenging. 

(Just remembered, at the time I stopped I was also doing my Masters degree while at the same time trying to bring a major development project to delivery while at the same time restructuring our engineering department, having taken over from the engineering manager who was off with stress. I feel a bit better now about not being able to cope with other people's hormonal teenagers just then! I had two of my own at that time as well...) 

But mostly it was great fun and I'd highly recommend it, I spent an awful lot of my spare time over 10 years doing it, fortunately there's a tradition in our part of the UK of the work week ending at lunchtime on Friday, which gave an afternoon a week in term time to do this stuff. 

Peter Brooks said:

I bring this question up because there appears to be a stigma associated with volunteering (not being paid) for helping out, in the UK at this time.

If there is I'm not seeing it! I currently work 4 days a week, but I'm looking to move down to 3 if a can as I'm struggling to find time for work among the amount of volunteering I'm doing, the assumption amongst the sort of people I get involved is "why work when you can have much more fun volunteering" (but of course this is a self-selected group of a certain age and, generally but not always, past income).

What can create an issue is the attitude that people "ought" to volunteer (and, tbh, this can come across in the IET sometimes). Volunteering needs to be voluntary, persuasion and encouragement is good, "guilt tripping" definitely isn't.

The other conflict that regularly happens is between "professionals" and "volunteers" - rather like my example above. My wife's worked in the charitable sector for very many years, and I've also been involved in it in various ways including as a trustee, and it is an incredibly difficult balance. The charities can't survive without volunteers, but it's a management nightmare as volunteers can decide to do whatever they want. You see some professionals treating highly skilled and experienced volunteers like children, and some volunteers (perhaps in consequence) acting like it! 

There are plenty of us STEM Ambassadors around!

Many medium and larger companies now offer a small (really small) amount of paid volunteering time as part of their social impact. I don't think its a particularly new idea either, I can think of some companies that were doing similar things a couple of decades ago at least.

But I agree with Andy, volunteering is best if it is something you enjoy. The nice thing about STEM Ambassadors is that their is a variety of activities that pop-up and you can choose what interests you.

I don’t know why you have the impression that there is a stigma associated with volunteering in the UK. Others have mentioned the STEM Ambassador programme which is a huge and successful nationwide programme of about 28000 volunteers. Far from being something just for retired engineers, I have done this for most of my career, and my company encourages our apprentices to join the programme, as they are best placed to attract school and college students choosing their careers. Additionally, there are around 300,000 school governors in the UK, which is the largest volunteer group in the country. Engineers are valued school governors. And of course the IET has a large body of volunteers working at many different roles within the organisation. I take part in all three of these voluntary roles and I know lots of others who do too.
You asked Andy: ‘Why did you do this?’ For me, the answer is that I like to use my experience to help others, and they appear to appreciate it.

Lee Nelson said:

Additionally, there are around 300,000 school governors in the UK, which is the largest volunteer group in the country. Engineers are valued school governors.

And indeed at the same time that I was a STEM ambassador I was also a school governor. Incidentally, if you are going to run an after-school engineering club it's very useful if you are also the H&S governor! (Not that that was why I was the H&S governor, it was just an unexpected bonus.) And, as you mention IET volunteering, I was also an IET school's liaison officer which in turn resulted in me to being a LN committee member and events organiser.

However, I would re-iterate that in my experience the people who tend to volunteer do tend to volunteer for many different things at once. And then there are many others who don't volunteer for anything. So it is hard to judge quite what proportion of the population do volunteer. I'd say that all my friends do, but then that's probably why they're my friends, like minds and all that!

To drag this a bit back on topic, throughout the time I've been volunteering (in various roles) for the IET I've been hugely frustrated at the disproportionately high numbers of retired IET volunteers. Not to criticise retired engineers who want to volunteer, that's great, but as a mid-career engineer seeking professional registration wouldn't you like to see your peer group involved in the process? One of the things that put me off joining and registering for many years was the perception that it was an "old boys club". I quite passionately believe that we need to get more working engineers involved in the professional registration process so that it is very clearly a peer review. Now I'm aware that there's a level of hypocrisy here as I've never volunteered as an assessor / interviewer because I couldn't / can't work out how to fit it around the day job. That said it should be much easier now we have moved from face-to-face interviews to online so that assessors / interviewers are no longer having to give up a whole day to it (including potentially travelling). And anyway, PRA work is very easy to fit around a work schedule.

I am regularly trying to persuade my colleagues to PRA / assess / interview without success, and often the response is "maybe when I retire" - I really think we need to find a way to encourage more people to do it now. 

Hello Andy:

There is a lot to unpack in your response so my answers may be come back in separate parts.

All volunteer jobs appear to end with a disagreement with ones priorities and those of controlling management after organizational changes.

Example disagreement over population priorities- Low income comes first while management wants to emphasize medium to high income people, for political reasons. 

You mentioned Friday work ends at lunch time is common practice in your area. There appears to be great pressure in the UK for a four day week for the same wage as a five day week. How productive is that?

Here in our area the big companies work 4 days week each lasting for 10 working hours - Friday is completely off. 

As regards working with kids I have a story to tell - My wife used to volunteer in the school clinics following approximately the same group of children from primary, middle and finally high school, as my own children progressed through the education system. She found out that the kids that disrupted classes (ended up going to the clinic) at primary school at 6 years old, were usually the ones that ended up with a criminal record in their teens.

Regarding bringing kids up -- they don't become fully human until they reach 24 years old based on brain scans. Girls can be a real pain in the early teenage years.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay  

Let's pull you up on that. They don't become fully mature until they are in their mid 20's. I assume you are referring to brain development because, some other aspects do mature earlier. But yes, there is research showing that emotional maturity comes later.

They are always fully human from birth (by definition).

Ah, for your other question. There is ample research from the Nordic countries supporting shorter working weeks but still remaining competitive. There are also a lot of companies that inflate their productivity by ignoring unpaid working time.

This is sort of drifting away from the original thread question now.

Getting a little back on topic...

Volunteering can be helpful to professional registration because it lets you practise some of the competencies in a different environment and often experience responsibilities that might not be feasible at the current point in your career. This can be particularly true for the CDE competencies.

So yes it is unpaid, but it can benefit the local community, and it has developmental benefits for the person involved. Therefore if you are put off from professional registration because you are not robustly demonstrating certain competencies in your day job, volunteering may be one option to help.

Mark Tickner said:

Volunteering can be helpful to professional registration because it lets you practise some of the competencies in a different environment and often experience responsibilities that might not be feasible at the current point in your career. This can be particularly true for the CDE competencies.

Quite. At the point where I became a school H&S governor I was experienced in functional safety, but not necessarily H&S. However I was also a team leader evolving to a department manager, and the H&S training and experience I got in the governor role (including experience of being audited) was hugely applicable to my development in the day job. For others the same very much applies through e.g. sports coaching, cadet forces etc.

Hello Lee:

I failed to answer your question about my statement concerning there being a apparent sigma against volunteering in the UK.

When my wife and I decided to attack social issues by volunteering here in the US - I was greeted by scorn from my older UK based family members.

Recent UK roadside video interviews with people discussing the government plan for young people to either serve in the armed forces for 1 year or to do community service (volunteering), indicated the complete rejection of the latter option, by teenagers.

Here is the US, teenagers expecting to go into University are told to get a certificate showing they have completed 50 hours of volunteering, in order to improve their chances of being accepted, by their chosen University.  

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Hello Lee:

I failed to answer your question about my statement concerning there being a apparent sigma against volunteering in the UK.

When my wife and I decided to attack social issues by volunteering here in the US - I was greeted by scorn from my older UK based family members.

Recent UK roadside video interviews with people discussing the government plan for young people to either serve in the armed forces for 1 year or to do community service (volunteering), indicated the complete rejection of the latter option, by teenagers.

Here is the US, teenagers expecting to go into University are told to get a certificate showing they have completed 50 hours of volunteering, in order to improve their chances of being accepted, by their chosen University.  

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

I would recommend not confusing the response to a rather ill-considered policy proposal by an unpopular (with that age group at least) political party in the UK as a complete dismissal of community service by our youth. This idea lacks any thought to how it might actually be implemented (i.e., there are issues with the availability of resources) and is already down to 3 months rather then 1 year.

If the government was really interested in building more volunteering/civil service, skills and life skills, it would provide funding for the The Duke of Edinburgh's Award to make sure more of our young people have the opportunity to participate. If you achieve Gold you have volunteered for a minimum of 21 months. For Bronze, you have volunteered for 3 months minimum (but more likely 6 months).

Most schools and youth groups do offer the scheme, but there are limited places in those groups and there can be a not-insignificant cost involved which will put some off.

The one school in my area which generally achieves the worst academic results doesn't offer the scheme at all. So those children, who are already likely to be on the lower social scales and thus end up in trouble, lack the opportunity to participate via their school. That's likely due to school funding.

Comparatively, the local grammar school which already provides some excellent opportunities for its children, somewhat due to sizeable donations from successful former pupils (the sort of donation that builds entire buildings) offers the full scheme and has its own military cadets clubs as well.

The other thing about that policy was that they were already talking about picking the "best of the best" for the military placements and everyone else would need to do community service. The best of the best would likely be heading to university and if they were interested in a military career they could join after their degree as a commissioned officer.

Hello Mark:

Just for the record, I attended a Grammar school just after WWII as a result of a "leveling up" program for low income families developed by the Labour government.

While there, I joined the military Cadets club, so that I could legally operate (play with) portable transmitter/receiver radio equipment. 

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Great for you.

However, these days the only way you get anywhere near a grammar school is by being top of the 11+ test because they are so oversubscribed. That means competing with many hundreds of other children who's parents have generally invested in private tutoring for the past one or two years (in some cases even more).

Less than 10% of the places are available for low income families, and that still requires achieving a specific score on the paper for which you will need to invest in some form of training to pass. In recent years we have seen content creep into the exam that is studied in secondary school. The 11+ is taken while the children are in primary school. Of course, as one of my friends pointed out, the private primary schools actually cover the 11+ content in their lessons to prepare the children for the test. But then when you have a class size of 10-15, you get through the mandatory content quicker.

Basically, unless you have parents with higher education, or the money to pay for tutoring (or at least the content in the exam that you won't be taught at school), you are unlikely to succeed. There will be exceptions of course. If you combine that with a primary that is generally failing (lack of investment you know), you have even more of a hill to climb.

Thus, when you look at the children at the local grammar school, for the most part you will find they come from privileged families or at least well educated ones.

Its also noted that a number of the applicants parents temporarily rent houses in the town whilst applying for the school, but once they have the place they move back. A few of my friends have done precisely this trick.

Hello Mark:

Yes I took the 11+ exam and came out top in my primary class of over 30.

Also had a one-on-one interview with the schools head teacher, plus pass the schools own exam.   

I was into electronics well before taking the 11+ test.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

I didn't. Not that we had the 11+ when I went to school, but the secondary school was very heavily "streamed" so there effectively was an 11+ assessment to decide whether you went into the GCE (old Grammar) stream or CSE (old Secondary Modern) stream. I was at the lower end of the secondary modern stream, where maybe some students may get some mark in a CSE assuming they bothered turning up and didn't actually set fire to the exam paper. 

I was one of the very few in my year to go to university (remembering it was a rarity in those days anyway), and I suspect one of even fewer to later get a masters, two institute fellowships two charterships and two further memberships, and let's face it, two somewhat successful careers in two very different engineering industries.  

While I'm sure some people can get correctly "selected" at 11 (or indeed in the UK 16, 18, 21 or any other critical age) my experience is that a significant number don't. 

So again dragging it back onto topic  in hindsight it's no surprise that given a somewhat messy secondary education following that initial mis-selection I got a pretty awful grade in my first degree - in particular I hadn't had a good enough grounding in maths. And I see all sorts of people who for all sorts of reason go, if you like, off track in their teens / twenties (or maybe just a different track). The great thing about professional registration is that, when it works as intended, it considers your actual proven competence in your profession, not what you did or didn't do 10, 20, 30 years earlier.

(Incidentally, and possibly relevant to the discussion for the same reason, the reason I was rated so low at 11 was because I had terrible eczema on my hands compounded by, I've only recently realised, the fact I probably had and still have a level of dyspraxia. You didn't get scores at school if you couldn't write, you didn't get marks for being able to think. Industry, however, is a different game. And of course that's only one example, in recruitment and staff development I came across, and still occasionally do come across, many other causes of missed identification of engineering abilities. I'm a huge fan of education, but I don't always (i.e. very rarely) place great reliance on formal assessment of educational attainment.)

Sorry, further thought over lunch: another great thing about professional registration is that it considers and demonstrates how you work as part of an engineering team. (I was just thinking about the trivial example that I still try to avoid taking minutes at meetings if it requires handwriting, but that's fine, we have a team.) As an employer I would generally rather have somebody competent who works well in a team, compared to somebody brilliant who's impossible to work with and who has no interest in compensating for that fact (that second point is important). Employing a professionally registered engineer should give you confidence in those team working and communication skills and attributes. Again formal education doesn't often give you marks for saying "I don't know the answer to that, but I know someone who does" - but very often that's what we need. Of course occasionally we do need the brilliant person who is maybe less well rounded as an engineer, and that's fine, we can identify that from their qualifications and track record. 

Hello Andy:

I am not a team player!

One can not be a team player if one is a "keeper of secrets".

I have been in meeting locations where an armed individual follows you, when you visit the bathroom.

Going back to my grammar school experience (actually back to my third primary school, the second having been firebombed in WWII) at  that time it was an "all boys" school, which I believe solves a lot of "acting up" problems.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

There are different sorts of engineering companies, depending on the type of work being done, and I can sympathize with both perspectives here, which are not really in opposition, but seem to think they are.

The school you go to may give you a push in a the right or wrong direction, but is only relevant for the first steps you take beyond it, and in engineering at least, stroking the old college tie in meetings but not actually  being competent is not a guarantee of promotion, nor I suspect was it ever in anything requiring some ability. (it may work in marketing, I'm not sure)

Research is more tolerant than development of oddball characters, especially once you have something that needs one of the three folk in the world who understand 'it' - whatever 'it' is, then someone who walks down the corridor making dalek noises and frightening the undergraduates during their day job may indeed still be an essential member of the team, even if you have to keep them away from direct contact with the customer and translate everything they say or write into plainspeak for the rest of the team.

Development however needs solid understanding, reliable repetition of similarly well-understood  tasks and methodically created easy to follow records of the design and there is a lot more of it needed than there is pure research.

I have worked with feet in both camps over the years and both 'sides' seem to view the other with suspicion, as not being 'proper' engineering, when really the division is more of a continuum.

Mike

Hello Andy:

Have you ever been involved in "team building" using Psychiatry - over here it was called "Tea grouping or encounter grouping"?

 It's like (seems to me) water boarding a person, without using water.

The group (all in one room over 3 day period) attempts to break down barriers.

It starts by asking what animal best describes yourself.

It appears to mostly attempt to break down the weakest member of the team.

In some cases that person ends up in tears after a triggered memory event.

Over the years, I went through three of them without any problems.

Peter Brooks 

Palm Bay 

Sounds awful. I've done a huge amount of work on team building (comes with the territory of running engineering teams, plus it's a major interest of mine anyway) but my approach was/is much simpler, just making sure that everyone appreciated each others' strengths in the engineering team. To deliver engineering projects you need the people who manage the paperwork, and manage the budget, and build the prototypes and first production versions, and design the production test systems, and talk to the end user, just as much as you need the people with the brilliant ideas. As I once told two members of my staff who were almost coming to blows, you don't have to like each other, you don't have to go to the pub together, but if you can't respect each other's skills and communicate effectively at a technical level then that's a problem.

Sometimes when working with EngTech/IEng/CEng applicants I do work with those - particularly with certain aspects of autistic spectrum behaviour - who do struggle to work in what might be thought of as a "team" environment. I point out to them that they don't even have to talk to other members of the team, but they must communicate with them effectively - for example by producing engineering documentation and taking in review comments on that documentation. I used to have a brilliant software engineer working for me who had issues talking to pretty much anyone in the department, and then moved to Australia anyway. It was fine, we'd send him a coding spec in the evening and next morning we'd get completed documented code. Perfectly good team playing.

For some reason I was reminded recently of the quote from Tim from the (UK) "The Office", something like: "These aren't my friends, they're just people I share the same carpet with  Monday to Friday". That's fine, which I think a lot of "corporate team building" forgets. However, equally I was discussion with a colleague this morning that post-covid we have fewer and fewer in person meetings with clients or with each other, and we were agreeing that that is causing issues. I do find it's much easier for people to gain and maintain that mutual respect for each other's abilities if there has been some element of socialising - the intra-meeting coffee break. Or to put it another way, it's much easier to dismiss someone as an idiot (which they're probably not) if you're just viewing them as their role, not as a human being. So I am a believer in some level of team building - or "conversation" to use the technical term!!!!!

I think we've strayed again, but maybe not - as above I think it's a strong aspect of professional registration to question whether "working as an island" is going to produce the best engineering. We all make mistakes, we all miss things, and we all have different competences.

I could probably write a book length post on this subject (in fact to some extent my Master's thesis was just that, and that was only a specific part of what I've looked at over the years) so I think I'd probably better stop there.

P.S. I moved into consultancy after 15 years' full time engineering management because I was just exhausted with trying to get (very, very competent) engineers to work together nicely. We were really effective at it, but my gawd it took its toll on us managing them. I did enjoy the last office reorganisation we did (by this time 95% ish of that team had been working with me for something like 12-13 of those years and knew me very well) - I just announced we were going to move office while I was on leave, so they'd all have to work out for themselves who was going to sit next to who  and who was going to sit next to the window / under the air conditioning etc etc - this time I was not going to arbitrate! The shock and horror on their faces was hilarious, of course it all worked out fine.