Another Step on the Ladder to Employee Retention

How one company is championing different career paths for its technical and managerial employees to boost engagement, motivation and retention.

The most up-to-date figures suggest that Northern Ireland’s employment rate has returned to its pre-pandemic peak and figures from NI Chamber’s last Quarterly Economic Survey suggest that 74% of companies are recruiting.

Within the engineering and technology sectors, often due to the specialised nature of their work, the pressure to retain employees is becoming more critical than ever and for companies to motivate and engage employees beyond the flurry of graduate schemes.

In this edition, we speak to Sensata Technologies Northern Ireland, which has been refining its career development programmes for over 20 years and recently presented on this topic at NI Chamber’s Future of Skills event in Belfast.

Darren Walker, systems & software director and site leader at Sensata NI, discusses one of the tools his company uses to motivate its engineering and technology workforce. He says, “Let’s think for a moment about why engineers choose their career in the first place. Often, it’s because they want to build or fix things. They like problem-solving and they like getting their hands dirty on developing or testing products.”

The global company with over 21,000 employees around the world recognises that as the careers of their young engineers develop, they often face a dilemma. Do they choose to remain focused on engineering or take a new step into a managerial role? Both directions offer opportunities, and the company wants to ensure that whatever career path their employee chooses offers similar options for development and promotion.

Darren continues, “At Sensata, engineering excellence is at the heart of everything that we do. It is through the development of new innovative products for the automotive and other industries that we retain and grow our customer base. Within Northern Ireland alone, our engineers hold numerous patents for new product developments such as vehicle tyre pressure monitoring.”

“We want to be able to reward that expertise by ensuring that our engineers who want to focus on engineering have a valid career path open to them which matches – in terms of benefits – that which is open to those who choose the traditional management path.”

The solution to this dilemma for Sensata Technologies is its Technical Ladder – an inhouse programme integral to the company’s engineering culture. At its core, the Ladder is a specially elected group of employees –Ladder members – who are the company’s technical thought leaders.

This year, six employees from Northern Ireland either joined the Ladder or took a further step up its levels of seniority. The Technical Ladder provides opportunities for personal recognition, compensation and reporting levels paralleling those for equivalent rungs on the Management Ladder, right up to the level of vice president.

It is a programme designed to encourage and reward the best engineering talent and their innovation contributions to the company.

Importantly, it also values leadership skills within this group and the in-depth market knowledge the Ladder members hold which helps to shape future company direction. Critical to the role of a member of the Technical Ladder is their ability to work within a team to align technical contributions with business goals and to develop the next generation of technical leaders.

Nevin Molyneaux, a software specialist and senior member of the technical staff at Sensata Technologies, said, “Coaching is a critical part of the Technical Ladder ethos. Being a member is recognised as a leadership position within the company because it combines skills development in innovation, responding to customer needs and getting ahead of market trends. It motivates us to think about how we can develop against a specific skills and competencies framework and to encourage us to consider different career options open to us. There are different “rungs” on the ladder, and you need to demonstrate continual improvement and development to climb it. As you become more senior in the technical programme, you’re encouraged to generate more of a global impact in addition to the work we do in Northern Ireland.”

Once within the Technical Ladder programme, you are evaluated every year by your supervisor to assess if you continue to meet its requirements. It’s a rigorous process of continual professional development but one which you can pause or choose to switch into the management career path if desired. The way the programme is designed makes it flexible for employees and builds in options.

Nevin continues, “For me, the Technical

Ladder is a unique internal programme, matured over many years. It is a progression path for engineers who are subject matter experts in their field and have a clear track record of technical leadership and innovation which has added to shareholder value.”

“I believe the technical coaching delivered as part of this programme is second to none. Like many engineering and technology companies, the development of our sensor technology is extremely specialised. We recognise that often the best way to train our people is through knowledge sharing. Making coaching a central part of being a member of the technical community supports our business for the long term.”

Darren Walker, who is responsible for reviewing annual global applications to the Technical Ladder as a member of Sensata’s global Engineering Council, continues, “Being able to attract, train and retain key talent is critical to our success as a business.

“Like many organisations, we invest a lot in our undergraduate and graduate programmes to develop technically bright and rounded employees, but this type of employee development can’t stop after two years. We need to continually show commitment to the development of our engineers and to show that we value their individual contribution to our success as a company. They need to be challenged as they become more senior in the company and for us to retain them as motivated, engaged professionals.”