SKILLS & RECRUITMENT
SPOTLIGHT ON NEW TALENT
Can offsite construction help to tackle skills shortages? Chris Jarman, Director of the Construction Talent Retention Scheme and Talentview Construction, offers some compelling reasons how it can. Part of the problem is that, whether the sector likes to admit it or not, we have not done enough to promote the attractions of the sector. We are not the only industry with a skills shortage, and we are up against many other sectors in the war for talent.
1 In the face of crippling skills shortages which are now impacting on housing completion rates and the levels of activity onsite, unsurprisingly a lot of scrutiny is now turning onto the efficiency and productivity opportunities presented by offsite construction. Construction is a varied sector, employing about three million people and offering multiple career paths. Even without the growth of ‘green jobs’, it is estimated by the CITB that the industry needs to recruit more than 217,000 new workers between now and 2025 to support its current activity, including the development of exciting new careers in digitalisation and sustainability. This demand is only likely to accelerate, as the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics indicate an estimated 500,000 UK-born workers are likely to leave the sector in the next 10 years as they come to retirement age. Clearly, we are not going to have the labour options we’ve enjoyed in the past. And as everyone knows, necessity
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is the mother of invention. We will have no choice but to look again at the way we build. But could the shift to offsite help provide a solution to the skills shortages? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. In the first place, we need to attract new entrants into the industry and ensure they’re coming in with the right mix of both construction and manufacturing skills and experience. Research that we carried out this autumn found that, despite record numbers of job vacancies, young people are finding it harder than ever to identify the right roles for their abilities and interests. We questioned almost 2,000 young workers and found that only 14% are very confident of finding suitable career opportunities this year, and nearly half believe it’s now harder to find jobs compared to pre-pandemic. When added to the figures above highlighting the looming skills challenges facing the construction sector, it’s clear that something needs to change. The talent is out there, but not enough people are considering construction as a serious career choice.
However, shifting to offsite could help to tackle part of the issue. As we know, the sector requires more digitally and manufacturing based skillsets compared to traditional methods, which in turn means employers can potentially recruit from a much larger pool of talent than they have had access to in the past. Many of the roles that the offsite sector is seeking now will be in even greater demand in the future as more employers identify the need for wider technological and manufacturing competencies. It’s highly likely that we’ll see steadily rising demand for continuous improvement leads, agile developers and specialists in areas like 3D printing, automation, LEAN and Six Sigma, along with a broader requirement for world-class manufacturing talent. In BIM alone, Go Construct predict there will be over 200,000 new jobs created within the next five years. Without attracting people from other sectors or encouraging more young people into construction, many firms will struggle to remain productive. Moving towards more modern methods of construction may help to widen the pool of talent, but employers must also focus on promoting the array of opportunities that are on offer more effectively. If these roles are made more visible, it’s likely that a wider range of young people will at least consider construction as their industry of choice. Solving other issues, like boosting the
WWW.OFFSITEMAGAZINE.CO.UK | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
