According to recent research by the Chartered Management Institute, we in the engineering profession are rather too laid-back for our own good. Apparently, only 38% of respondents to a recent CMI survey of engineering managers’ top concerns believed that ‘managing risks’ was ‘most important’. Around a third suggested that ‘developing talent’ was a ‘significant issue’, despite more than two thirds of respondents admitting that skills and talent management was the key challenge currently facing UK employers.
CMI director, Jo Causon is just a little aghast at this result. Skills issues aside, the question remains: how will UK organisations manage in the future if they fail to address the key operational issues? Causon adds that, rather than simply focusing on ‘what should be done today’, the inability to plan properly might lead to questions of a more critical nature – ‘what opportunities have been missed’ or, worse still, ‘how did we not see that coming?’
Rather perversely, the survey revealed that in a sector renowned for its innovative capabilities, ‘innovation’ scored low on a scale of priorities. Indeed, just 21% of respondents cited ‘creativity and inventiveness’ as a top challenge, with a mere fifth of the sample arguing that innovation is important in today’s working environment. Worrying indeed!
According to the findings of one prominent company within the automation sector, engineering no longer offers the safe, long-term career prospects that it once did. The universities are cutting back on engineering courses – not to mention some of the key scientific departments that underpin the discipline – with students making a beeline for ‘softer’ options in the arts and humanities. Skills shortages within the sector are well publicised and further comment here is, perhaps, superfluous.
But there’s some light on the horizon. According to Causon, there were glimmers of a positive nature coming out of an otherwise rather depressing CMI survey. A healthy 87% of respondents are clearly wrapped up in their work, admitting that they ‘can’t wait to get up in the morning’! Some 81% claimed that is was easy to ‘keep positive’ and 61% suggested that, despite their heavy workloads, taking time out for lunch was no longer a challenge. Long may that be the case.
Les Hunt
Editor