A study published last week by the Chartered Management Institute and seven* of the UK's professional bodies reveals that individuals with professional qualifications and membership stand to gain substantial additional earnings over the course of their career. The study also uncovers wide benefits to the public purse, as higher earning, professionally qualified individuals deliver higher tax revenues
Some key findings include an estimated lifetime economic benefit associated with holding professional qualifications valued at £81,000. The study also shows how membership of a professional body can result in additional earnings of up to £71,000 in today’s money terms. The cumulative benefit is thus £152,000 over a working lifetime (a salary premium of 37%). Moreover, based on today’s taxation levels the estimated additional lifetime tax revenue contributed by an individual with professional qualifications is £53,000 at current levels of taxation.
The study’s authors assert that individuals with professional qualifications and membership enjoy a 9% increase in the probability of being employed because of the transferable skills on offer. This figure, coupled with the 37% salary premium that professionally qualified staff might expect, demonstrates the high value employers place on the skills developed by professional bodies, the authors claim.
Another assertion is that professional qualifications are ‘open access’; in other words, individuals are able to build transferable skills no matter what their previous qualification level has been. At a time of economic downturn, this transferability of skills is perhaps more important than ever. Focusing specifically on the engineering profession, one wonders just how transferable the skills of this diverse body are. At least one organisation is urging the profession to expand its outlook.
ATA Energy, a specialist division of the engineering and construction recruitment group, ATA, believes that engineers feeling the pinch, as manufacturing industry continues its current steep decline, might do well to consider transferring their skills to sectors with demonstrable future potential.
Hardly have we begun lamenting the shortage of engineers – particularly the lack of young people seeking careers in engineering – than we arrive at a situation where highly skilled individuals with established careers in the manufacturing sector may well become surplus to requirements. And this is not the first time that many an engineering talent has foundered as the result of economic turmoil.
The emerging renewable energy sector is enjoying dramatic growth and is searching for engineers to work in areas such as onshore and offshore wind, solar power, biomass, biofuel and ground source systems. ATA says it can offer candidates advice about how best they may be able to transfer their existing skills and turn them to good use for the renewable sector. And, apparently, there is no shortage of positions to fill.
So it’s back to ‘getting on your bike’ by the sounds of it - which is all well and good, so long as the itinerant professional is also able and willing to move his or her family to another part of the country to take advantage of distant employment opportunities. The ‘credit crunch’, negative equity and the mortgage famine are likely to put a brake on that one.
Les Hunt
Editor
*The Consultative Committee for Professional Management Organisations (CCPMO), a group representing eight leading professional bodies in business disciplines. Members include the Chartered Management Institute, Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, Chartered Institute of Marketing, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply, Institute of Credit Management and Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.