Appointments: Apprentices need a degree of support

Despite the latter day efforts by both the Scottish and UK Governments and industry
bodies, being able to get the right number of qualified people at professional and technical level remains a close relation to caps on growth. The personnel issue undoubtedly has its own constraining impact on competitiveness. 

To offset, companies have started to grow their own highly specific apprenticeship schemes, often in tandem with local colleges. For degree calibre people, firms have forged closer relationships with universities to achieve a better fit through industry-informed courses at both undergraduate and post graduate levels.

We are heading in the right direction – but it’s inconsistent. We need to go faster. 

My latest micro-symposium set a fresh perspective on all of this, void of the baggage of customary Scottish thinking and an eye-opener for its simple, effective, tried and tested approach. 

Jean-Marc Gales – CEO at Group Lotus plc, the Norfolk-based sports car manufacturer and automotive engineering consultancy – has a strikingly unembellished outlook, its roots set in his own engineering and international business career path but carrying a resilient solution to workforce balance.  And it’s far from new.

Gales is from Luxembourg and holds MSc degrees in both Management (Imperial College, London) and Mechanical Engineering (University of Karlsruhe, Germany). His CV includes senior executive posts at Daimler and Volkswagen, and at French auto giant Peugeot Citroen. 

In basic terms, if more youngsters at school are attracted to the necessary science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects – as is now beginning to occur again in Scotland – Gales believes a larger number of bright young people should be encouraged into technology apprenticeships, with an open-ended proposition to continue on to university if they are able and willing. 

“The best engineers we have in Lotus are those who have also worked hands-on – because they know how to build the car,” he told me.

“You need a good selection of highly-qualified ones [engineers] with a good selection of those who came from the workshop.

“In Germany there is no discussion [no question about the matter]. Half the engineers there have an apprenticeship already. It should give them an edge in resolving issues faster.  There are many benchmarks outside of the UK where countries do this already.”

Perhaps it is the post that he held immediately previous to his Group Lotus chair that allows him clear insight in this context. As CEO of the European Association of Automotive Suppliers, with offices close to EU policy makers, the question of whether enough engineers are being produced to avoid artificial caps on innovation, while addressing how best to accelerate work towards achieving the optimal workforce skills mix of tomorrow, was frequently on the agenda.

“I discussed this subject a lot when I was working in Brussels,” he says. “We need to move much further ahead.

“If you look at how many graduates come out of Chinese universities – in engineering, mathematics, science, technology – we are talking millions of highly qualified people. They are getting better and better qualified and we cannot keep up.

“Specifically in the UK, we must make the engineering professions much more attractive to young people. That’s what we find with our apprentices. We now have 25 and [it is open to them] to also study for engineering and to move up the company. 

“We have some ex-apprentices who have senior jobs now in Lotus but we [the UK] certainly could do much more in promoting the attractiveness of these jobs in a UK that has been very much biased towards service jobs. We can’t rest on our laurels.”

Gales’ remark about the Chinese has sharp topicality, especially this week with the announcement that the UK is forging a financial alliance with that country to build Chinese-designed nuclear reactors for new British power stations. 

Some of their engineers may be British, or German or American or Australian, it’s true – it’s a very international profession.  But it indicates how far things have come globally and the need to compete on numbers.

The school to technical apprentice to university method is highly flexible and very under-exploited here.

Arguably, as we still have in Scotland a better thought out education chain than in the rest of the UK, it’s odd that it hasn’t been adopted as a mass model. 

It isn’t only a solution that assists in meeting demand for technical apprentices, with the bonus of moving on to professional engineer status to top-up the other number stimulation measures – it also offers a leg-up to widening access to university for some who might be passed over when considering their options after school.

Some of those moving up may later be sponsored by their employer.

Gales agrees it is a way of offering a viable alternative to full-time higher education. With on-the-job training and mentorship and possession of university entry-level Highers, it may delay but also enhances rather than dilutes the opportunity to commence a degree.

The overall result is a net easing of a dangerous recruitment dilemma – and a demonstration of the joined-up rationale we currently lack.