Whilst it’s important to attract the next generation, engineering firms have a blind-spot when it comes to up-skilling existing talent writes our anonymous blogger
I have written in the past regarding my concerns about what undergraduate engineers are being taught, this time I would like to address the other end of the spectrum. I vividly recall my redundancy from a position as Design Engineer a number of years ago, only one casualty of “restructuring” among many. The reason for my own dismissal was given as being that the company was going to use graduates to take a design from initial specification to a full set of detail drawings; a concept seemingly rather flawed to me both then and now. As, at the time, I didn’t have a degree that was me out.
Personally I have never bought into the general notion that a lack of formal qualification should bar you to any level within industry. There have been countless arguments about the status of the term “engineer”, and whether or not it should be tied in with holding a degree, but this is different. Formal qualifications and ability in pertinent disciplines (not necessarily always the same thing) are important but to be so focussed on degrees, or other qualifications for roles below that ceiling, is to cut industry off from a significant pool of talent .
However, if this resource is to be utilised a commitment by the company is required and a willingness to offer structured support and training is essential. An added complication may be that any individual embraced by this process could have underlying reasons that have prevented them from achieving academically up to this point, with dyslexia in particular springing to mind. Thankfully a condition now generally recognised and with help made available to sufferers but, even so, it may have blighted someone’s experience of formal education.
To be so focussed on degrees is to cut industry off from a significant pool of talent
The two extremes can be illustrated through one friend who runs a design office and has taken her qualifications all the way up to a Masters degree despite her dyslexia and another who, I fear, has always been held back by his. It is the latter who is the inspiration for this piece.
Sidney joined Sleepy Hollow Electronics part time to help out in the warehouse, primarily with the marshalling of build kits for the shop floor. As far as I am aware he has carried out these duties diligently and accurately, he is always pleasant to talk to, bright and has what is generally known as “a good attitude.” Look beyond this though, engage him in conversation, and you will find that he is a keen motorist who has carried out much of the work himself to modify his car in a number of significant ways.
The opportunity came to nurture and encourage his natural talent when a new position was created for a second Nurfing Machine Setter, a role that would probably not fill a complete week on its own but which had been declared as important to mitigate against an identified risk to the company.
Setting a Nurfing Machine is undoubtedly a skill, a skill that needs some engineering “feel”, but there are no complex calculations or other intricacies allied to any other form of “book learning.” Sydney therefore seemed ideal to me and I encouraged him to apply for the post. However, I am sure primarily due to the dismissive way he is viewed by his manager (possibly underscored by a lack of confidence due to his dyslexia), he did not. Equally his manager has not bothered to find out more about what his charge can offer and, sadly, is so brittle that any other member of the senior team suggesting Sydney would no doubt count as a mark against him.
Thus the company failed to exploit a talent already available and Sydney was denied the first step along a path that I suspect would suit him very well. Sleepy Hollow Electronics ended up employing an experienced Setter who still needed training up on our machines and who spends a significant amount of time sat around bored and with nothing to do. Sydney remains part time on his previous duties. Multiple opportunities missed and, I suspect, no-one really happy with the outcome. A situation that can’t be good for anyone.
Academia has flooded our companies with degrees worldwide,
I have not seen where the produced product has increased in value to the cost of the degree.
We need to measure the total cost of academia against the national GDP.
If the GDP rise is not at a greater rate than the total cost of academia – tuition, books housing, meals served, new construction, staffing, book publishing, traveling professors etc. etc., academia is not providing the product society has paid for.
As is, there is no way to measure their failure or success to produce the product they claim.
Academia has no intention of letting anyone measure them, that is why they embrace socialistic governing bodies, Competition; is not in their structured courses.
If you cannot measure what you provide, how do you know you provided it
Charles R. Schneider
And its teaching of good English grammar!
And spelling.
I was really singing along with this until the Nurfing started.
If you look at the qualifications that are required to fill many of today’s engineering jobs you realize those ads were not written by qualified people. Someone in human resources (who has zero engineering knowledge) just asks for everything he can think of and then the company cries about the lack of qualified applicants. Human resources gets an attaboy for being so diligent and the company becomes less competitive.
I went to a good technical high school and got a job with a company as an electronics technician in the early 70’s. I was interviewed by an engineer, it was a small company and could not afford a personnel department. Over the next several years i worked my way up an engineering position and a few years after that I was reviewing all new designs to make sure they met the customers specifications, a lot of our work was military. All I had was my high school diploma and a lot of study on my own. i had my tentacles into ever corner of that company and I found problems in the early stages before they became major problems. I spent at least half my 10 hour day on the production floor, test department, and stock rooms) wenty four years later the company closed because of Chinese competition and I was a manager – still with that high school diploma and a willingness to learn.
After that another engineer and I started a company that serviced the old companies equipment (34 years old when it closed) and even manufactured some of the designs for our old customers (NSA, CIA, USN, Suez Canal Authority).
Before you go outside to hire new people take a good look at those you already have, why risk the unknown when you can utilize someone you already know.
I agree that any company should look within. We have moved from diversity goals, to millennial targets but now ageism seems to be a major issue. Rather than invest in a 10 or 15-year employee to increase their educate or skills by sending them back to school, they would rather pay for a full MBA for a college graduate not yet committed to the company and likely never to be that loyal after the degree. HR evaluates “runway” of employee before they invest. While I know no loyalty to companies or vice versa exists in today’s evironment, who is more likely to stay with a company, a 15 or 20 year employee or someone who had only been there 2 years. Invest and reskill and educate your existing employees – think outside the box – as it takes less expense to get them a new level and they contribute faster to the bottom line.
I would suggest that an existing member of staff is just like an existing customer. Much easier to ‘improve’ than attempting (and getting right so that its successful) the issues involved in seeking a new one! “sell a new product (or ‘role/ skill) to an existing customer(or employee) or an existing product (or skill/role) to a new one: BUT never a new role/skill/product to a new customer/ employee. At the least there is a social/personal link and loyalty : you know something about each other which the innovation needs to gel!
Of course HR ( always on hand to bu**er-up good management ) get their ‘bribes’ [attendance at conferences, seminars, free-bees, gifts] from recruitment consultants and advertisement(s) in trade journals: so there is no incentive to them to look inside the firm?
I am speaking from the mining and manufacturing industries as that is where my primary base of knowledge comes from. I applaud the previous speakers and I totally agree with the comments each has spoken on. I have had the privilege this week to visit a large mining exposition and meet with some of the speakers at the information’s sessions. I asked a question on the experience of the older ‘Baby Boomer Generation and thereafter’ on the number of workers that are now twiddling their thumbs and going batty because they have been made redundant because University degree’s engineering staff of the majority of mining companies fail to see the value of the older generation because in their eye, we are all past it with regards to relevance to new technologies in the workplace. Because of that, many great skills people were dumped on the scrap heap.
One of the speakers, a mate, and the other 3 on the particular panel all approached me after the session and during the conversations, the facts were rolled out on a particular subject and these 4 speakers all reiterated that they have approached older ex-staff or people they knew had the ‘Hands On’ experience of decades of work and have been bought into the fold, some on part time basis, to help up-skill the “paper (mostly Bum Fodder material) wielding” university graduates to bring sensibility & “Until you have experienced it first hand you cannot understand the intricacies that only experience teaches” knowledge and make those skills part of the requirements to move their particular company/s forward in some degree of ‘Safety’. All expressed the analogy and said the industry has regressed back to making the same mistakes we did and fixes we wrote up regarding the issue/s to the problems we experienced and solved decades ago. The young generations are now making the same mistakes over and over again but the majority of company’s clients young engineers who apparently know everything on paper, that works in theory, but when the real task is undertaken it fails and the young engineers express the fact why doesn’t it work and they scratch their heads. They will not listen to the knowledgeable ex or older worker, with no degree paper, and they will not ask for help. When their very senior ‘OLD’ manager of their division asks what is the hold up, they give all sorts of excuses to ‘Cover their Asses’ and this is due to facts that the Governmental and University protocols teach them that they are ‘Self Reliant within themselves’ and they don’t need help from other people. It is a blight on governments and universities of all persuasions in that they set in place and set up the ‘Protocols’ at the detriment of the industries to operate better. These protocols are those now written by the UN-knowledgeable younger persons trying to set up their own modular-zed formats protocols. From conversations I have had with these younger people is they are not dumb and are willing to learn, once they have been shown aspects which is not taught in schools and universities. ie: safety as a point of view. When writing up a job procedure, Safety is not generally written into that particular procedural protocols to be addressed because it is in legislation and it is someone else’s problem to make sure Safety is adhered to. Unfortunately, when you look into a mirror, “You are looking at the ultimate person responsible for your SAFETY, YOU!” & “Safety for yourself and those around you belongs solely to YOU and everyone around you doing the same.”
All 5 of us know that the rate of severe injury and deaths are going to occur as has happened during the boom times 30 or so years ago and statistics today have already started to trend toward the catastrophic situations happening all over again despite the over-abundance masses of legal requirements that has flooded the paperwork to be adhered to. It comes back to the main point that “Common Sense MUST Prevail!”
All 5 of us expressed the fear that we are going to be attending to more funerals or severe injury of the young/-er generation than we should have to be subjected to.
I encourage all my engineering Higher Apprentices to develop their own personal LinkedIn networks of tutors, volunteer mentors, STEM Ambassadors and industry contacts to help them apply what they’ve learnt and develop their skills. It works very well, costs nothing and overcomes the GDPR and safeguarding hurdles.
To paraphrase Joni Mitchell ‘You Don’t Know What You Have Until It’s Gone’
That should be engraved on the door frame of HR Depts across the country.
Managers should realize where innovations came from in the last major conflict.
I was approached by the HR Company which made me redundant at my employer 6 months after the fact and asked if I wished to return on the proviso I returned my redundancy pay. My employer obviously valued my efforts so little it let me go in the first place.
That was eight years ago.