Many industries are facing a skills shortage, and this strain is particularly present within manufacturing and engineering, with many manufacturers citing the challenges of bringing fresh STEM talent into the workplace as an ageing and skilled workforce reaches retirement.

This shortage is driven by strong competition for skilled candidates, a shortage of applicants with appropriate qualifications, and a general lack of awareness among young people of the educational routes into engineering occupations.

Recent research[1] found just 23.6% of young people aged 11 to 14, and 25.5% of those aged 14 to 16, reported knowing what people working in engineering do. What’s more, recruitment activity for engineering roles accounted for 25% of all job postings in the UK in 2021.

Unlike other industries, such as the IT or customer service sectors, where hybrid or even fully remote working is becoming the new normal, a career in manufacturing will almost always be site based.

Enticing young school or university leavers into a five-day-a week office or factory environment is likely to breed a culture of supply and demand. Plus, the brightest and best candidates will drive up salaries in the manufacturing industry as a trade-off for the convenience of home working that many of their peers will be enjoying.

With this in mind, what challenges does the current and future employment landscape hold, and how can manufacturers adapt their recruitment and retention policies for new ways of working?

Shift towards hybrid & remote working

Covid truly changed the way in which we work, making hybrid and fully remote roles the new normal. So, nowadays when young people complete their education and consider which career path to take, home working has a significant attraction factor, with advantages such as not having to commute and flexibility with working hours.

Hybrid and remote working are often preferential from a personal and family perspective too and can open up the potential to work from anywhere. In contrast, the nature of engineering roles can be perceived as inconvenient – especially when factories are open 24/7 or 24/6. This typically results in shift work, which can be less desirable to potential candidates.

However, from a work culture perspective, having a job based on site at a specific location – such as an office or factory – can be a strength. Remote working can leave people feeling disconnected, minimising the chance for interaction with colleagues and face-to-face mentoring.

For younger generations, working in isolation could mean they may not advance as quickly as they should, and roles can become very transactional with minimal personal interaction. This could stunt opportunities to develop essential social skills and the nuances of daily contact with people. Back-to-back video calls and online meetings can also be detrimental to mental health, as well as providing a lack of social interaction.

Improving the employee pipeline

Like many manufacturers, we have an aging workforce in our technical, engineering and manufacturing roles, where it is usually a smaller population of people that are highly skilled. We can also struggle to recruit females in this space, and currently do not have any females in a technical engineering capacity at all.

When it comes to improving the employee pipeline, an additional challenge unique to private label manufacturers is that our brand is not well known. We manufacture on behalf of global retailers, so although it’s likely that European families will have our cleaning products under the sink, they will feature the branding of the likes of Carrefour or Tesco.

Attracting young people can be especially difficult, as they are not our target demographic and it is often their parents who are responsible for purchasing household cleaning products.

Therefore, manufacturers need to make job opportunities more desirable for potential candidates; to demonstrate the nature of the work, the advantages of a career in this sector, and where it can lead. We have a duty to excite the youngsters of today and make the roles we offer a designated career choice.

Supply and demand

Supply and demand plays a big part too, and if there is a shortage of applicants for these particular roles then we see this driving up salaries. To cope with a staff shortage, there are a few models we adopt.

In some regions, where we face recruitment challenges, we use third party engineers and outsourced staff, but this comes with its own challenges. Firstly, it is not as cost effective or efficient as using our own staff. Secondly, we find that third party staff have lower levels of investment in our company so discretionary effort can vary. Knowledge and expertise also varies, which impacts a site’s overall performance.

In some countries where apprenticeship programmes exist, we actively support and grow young talent.

In addition, we regularly benchmark our terms and conditions to ensure our total reward being offered is competitive in the local countries where we operate.

A proactive approach

One of our biggest challenges is to effectively communicate who we are and the benefits of working for McBride. We often see people are not aware of the size of our business or that we are a PLC with blue chip credentials.

The goal is to raise the profile of our business from a recruitment perspective and demonstrate the opportunities available. We offer long-term careers and invest in nurturing and developing people within our organisation with a range of benefits, career progression plans, and development opportunities.

In countries where we are struggling to attract new talent, we are taking a proactive approach to recruitment. This includes hosting events such as family and open days to showcase our sites and explain what we do. We have also been attending job and career fairs, showing a presence in several locations and being proactive in speaking with people looking for job opportunities.

It is important to feature existing employees and offer testimonials to help potential candidates understand our roles and the career progression paths available. For example, profiling a colleague that joined our business as apprentice and is now an engineer.

Communication of benefits is also key. Every country is nuanced when it comes to this area, however in general we are competitive on total remuneration, and we offer shift premiums for shift workers. Alongside that we provide other benefits including enhanced holiday packages, healthcare schemes, free parking and products, among others.

Employee retention

Employee retention is a key factor too, as it is far more costly to recruit than it is to retain current staff. With this in mind, we recently launched our first employee voice engagement survey to help us understand different segments of our business. The aim is to conduct regular surveys providing essential data on how employees are feeling alongside identification of any underlying issues that could impact productivity and morale.

[1] Edge Foundation – Skills shortages in the UK economy 2024 – https://www.edge.co.uk/documents/480/DD1279_-_Skills_shortages_bulletin_summary_2024_FINAL.pdf