Background
Peaks and troughs in demand in the engineering sector currently result in the instability of the labour market. That instability typically causes a significant loss of skilled personnel to the manufacturing engineering sector and significantly exacerbates the demographic effects which already threaten to restrict the future manufacturing engineering workforce in the UK.
The engineering sector has a paucity of facilities and support. There is a need to address this current failure of provision and focus on the retention, re-training, upskilling and redeployment of mature skilled adult workers. These are workers who are at risk of redundancy, surplus to current requirements or who have strategically valuable skills but are not using them. Support for these workers does not trigger until they are actually made redundant, when it is often too late. Research has demonstrated that only 10 - 30% of these skilled individuals will seek employment back in the engineering sector. Often time-served, highly skilled engineers and technical workers turn their backs on engineering to become estate agents, driving instructors or taxi drivers. The loss of such skills and knowledge has a significant effect on regional GDP and competitiveness, damaging the ability to create a range of employment roles through the attraction of high-value industries.
Aims
The Midlands Engineering Industries Redeployment Group (MEIRG) aims to ensure that the Midlands can better retain and develop the well trained, skilled and motivated pool of engineering talent that currently exists within the region. It is a regional pilot for a concept that may eventually be promoted throughout the UK.
Objectives
- Developing and assisting businesses to realize their potential, enabling them to remain competitive in today’s economic climate.
- Supporting companies’ skills shortages through bespoke and generic training.
- Developing and assisting people by giving them the necessary, transferable skills they need in order to remain in or enter into the engineering sector.
- Offering secondments, mentoring and coaching opportunities to support the sectors HR and operational needs.
At the heart of the MEIRG is a confidential web-based recruitment database using C-Web. Participating companies display vacancies on the MEIRG site and view prospective candidates. People looking for new job opportunities in the manufacturing engineering sector are able to job search easily and quickly for current vacancies. Individuals register their details and access a job matching service, through which they are personally matched against any suitable vacancies.
Bespoke and employer-led training has been offered which:
- Assists member employers in filling labour and skills gaps
- Assists member employees in acquiring multiple or key skills that will improve their prospects of continued employment and redeployment within manufacturing engineering by enabling them to move within or externally to their employer.
- Provides some of the infrastructure, the 'know how', expertise and necessary contacts to member employers to enable them to become practitioners of workforce redeployment.
Target Groups
engineering employees at risk of redundancy, large engineering firms, SMEs
