There is no question that an army of new recruits is required for the UK energy market and, in a strange twist, part of the solution might actually be newly-redundant military service personnel.
Future Force 2020 proposals to cut troop numbers from 100,000 to 82,000 include a promise to protect famous regiments and those on active combat duty so “no infantry cap badges should be lost”. Steep reductions in numbers are therefore targeted at support units such as the Corps of Royal Engineers, Royal Logistic Corps, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and the Royal Artillery.
For the energy sector, this military downsizing makes available a sizeable body of technically competent and experienced jobseekers at a time when demand for skilled engineers is high. The picture is complicated, however, by the collateral damage of defence cuts in the form of knock-on impacts in the commercial supply chain.
The current wave of such job losses runs into the thousands. Effects this year include the end of a 500-year tradition of shipbuilding in Portsmouth, plus reductions in submarine and aircraft manufacturing operations elsewhere. The implications are twofold: a further discharge of skilled personnel into the marketplace, combined with a proportionate longer-term decline in overall industry capacity and potential spike in business losses.
What is important is ensuring that skilled personnel are retained in sectors which still have strong potential for growth. This not only safeguards UK skills, but ensures continued economic growth in the face of massive cuts.
Figures already place as many as 2.3 million people in the UK’s engineering-related skills base, equating to roughly 8% of the national workforce. With 39% of engineering employers reported to be planning to expand and recruit, the job market is heating up.
Of course, energy is not the only game in town. There are alternative routes for ex-forces personnel to choose when entering the civilian job market. Sectors other than energy are coming alive to this recruitment potential, as evidenced by the launch of BuildForce, a job brokerage programme for leavers seeking careers in the built environment.
With £100bn of government infrastructure spending in the pipeline, and an increasingly competitive marketplace, questions are being asked of energy and engineering: how strong is the pull of our sector and how transferable are the skills of the ex-forces personnel?
Mike Jones, human resources director at Siemens Energy, says: “We attract people now from a range of industries including aerospace, the Ministry of Defence, advanced engineering, oil and gas, as well as the wider energy and utility sector. Recruitment from the armed forces is an important part of our candidate-sourcing strategy. They do come with generic transferable competencies but there will always be the need for us to provide industry-specific training.”
For Siemens, attracting applications from across a diverse talent pool is a collaborative process. In the case of ex-forces recruitment, the company liaises closely with intermediaries such as the Career Transition Partnership, and it helps to drive forward the transferable-skills agenda alongside other private sector players on the board of Talent Retention Solution (TRS).
Through engagement with organisations such as RenewableUK and the National Skills Academy for Power, Siemens is also actively supporting joint efforts to secure a sustainable flow of skilled and experienced recruits for the wind and marine energy sector.
Casting recruitment nets wider has become a necessity, according to Mike Morgan, senior manager at Hays Energy. “Employers are not only looking to other highly regulated industries, where people are used to working in very controlled environments, but are having to think more creatively. Some are finding transferable skills in machining industries, where engineers designing technically-challenging equipment with an array of mechanisms and moving parts are a good fit,” he says.
But can the energy job market – associated with physical, mechanical and electrical engineering – compete with the lure of digital and mobile technology in its appeal to younger recruits? According to consultant Miles Davey, they might not have to. “If we are indeed on the cusp of a third industrial revolution, we will bear witness to a coming together of IT, telecoms and energy and engineering.” He sees huge crossover with digital skills markets as energy design and engineering becomes intelligent, computerised and mobile. “A smarter world is producing obscene amounts of data. In the last two years alone, we have generated 90% of the world’s data. I can see a new breed of talent developing that diverges across both digital and engineering.”
With digital and mobile technology already part of the engineering solution, Jones also foresees a dynamic energy skills market ahead. “Digitalisation and electronic engineering will feature increasingly across all industries over these next ten years. Our job is to embrace the opportunities that this revolution will bring. Put this together with making a contribution to green energy targets, what could be better.”
Case study: ‘Every day is different’
Derek Whyte spent 22 years in the army with the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers. After he left, he got a job at BAE Systems as an integrated logistics support engineer, where he stayed for two years. From there he moved to Siemens to take a role recommended by a former services colleague.
In his role as a site manager, he had to juggle a large number of different tasks and prioritise them accordingly – a requirement for his job in the army. In his current role, as part of the set up team for Westermost Rough, he has to deploy good project, time, people management and customer-facing skills as well as an ability to multi-task.
“Previous experience as a manager in the armed forces and an ability to adapt to any situation stood me in good stead to fulfill the requirements for the role,” Whyte says. “Every day is different; you never know what the next challenge will be. I do believe this industry offers a great opportunity for those who want to pursue a career in it.”
Content on this page is paid for and provided by Siemens, one of the sponsors of the Big Energy Debate.
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