Skills transfer

Latest industry figures have shown that staff redeployment in the engineering sector has increased by 10.1 per cent as employers look for alternatives to redundancy.

The 2009 National Management Salary Survey, conducted by the Chartered Management Institute and salary survey specialists, CELRE, revealed that employers are using internal structuring to transfer core skills throughout their business.

Compared with 2008’s internal transfer rate of 0.4 per cent, this year’s figures show an increase in retraining and motivating skilled staff in the wake of the ‘salary slowdown’.

According to the survey, 16.7 per cent of function heads have been transferred over the past 12 months compared with 4.2 per cent being made redundant. A similar trend was found with junior staff, with 18.3 per cent offered transfers and 3.5 per cent who faced redundancy.

However, the survey also revealed that the majority of employers are struggling to retain key staff. Around 47 per cent blamed the salaries they were able to offer, 46 per cent on job insecurity and the lack of career opportunities and 22 per cent on internal bureaucracy.