Manufacturing Apprenticeships: How can we rebuild the workforce?

Description

With nearly 25% of the current UK engineering workforce expected to retire within the next four years, combined with the ever-growing challenge of the engineering skills gap, the need for apprenticeships has never been greater.

Joined by Adam Tipper, Managing Director and Co-owner at Next Gen Makers, our host Alex Edwards seeks to explore the experiences faced by apprentices and the best practices companies can deliver to retain young talent and rebuild the engineering workforce.

Items referenced in this episode:

→ Next Gen Makers

→ Next Gen Makers Insight

→ Next Gen Makers Annual Engineering Skills Conference

→ Make UK

→ Engineering UK Report

Chapters

→ What trends are emerging in the engineering skills shortage in the UK? (00:54)

→ How can companies effectively attract and retain young talent? (04:44)

→ What does Next Gen Makers do? (09:04)

→ How does Next Gen Makers measure success for initiatives? (11:20)

→ What is the Next Gen Makers Annual Engineering Skills Conference? (14:34)

→ What findings were highlighted in the Next Gen Makers insight report? (17:09)

→ What common mistakes lead to poor experiences for apprentices? (19:27)

→ What advice would you give to young professionals entering a manufacturing apprenticeship? (25:18)

→ What's the single most important action that needs to be taken to start bridging the gap today? (27:20)

Episode transcript

0:05 Alex Edwards

Hello, and welcome to the Protolabs InspirON Exchange podcast. The show for engineers and designers to connect with industry leaders and academics to learn more about what's happening in the industry, how to innovate, and the opportunities that lie ahead. Today, I'd like to focus on apprenticeships, particularly their current position in manufacturing and their potential in an ever-changing industry. I'm joined by Adam Tipper, Managing Director and Co-owner of Next Gen Makers, with years and years of experience helping UK manufacturers and engineers run effective apprenticeship programs that allow all involved to compete, thrive, and grow. Great to have you on today, Adam. Let's jump right in.

It's well documented. The skills gap, you know, it's been spoken about for a while now. But how has it evolved in the sort of recent years, and what trends are you seeing now?

0:54 Adam Tipper

I think we're certainly at the point where industry's feeling the pinch.

You know, probably about the last three or four years, we've been talking about nearly 25% of the workforce, upwards of 20% of the workforce is set to retire by 2026.

And we're towards the end of 2024 now at the point of recording this. So, you know, that's why we see, we hear a lot of companies bringing up the skills gap, bringing up the skill shortage. It's really starting to feel a pinch because of those time served engineers that are coming towards retirement age and are choosing to retire that are sort of leaving the sector.

I think it's been building over decades, you know, under investment in apprenticeships at governmental level, macro level, over decades. And perhaps, whereas twenty, thirty years ago, you might have had much larger OEMs or tier ones in different engineering supply chains overtraining apprentices more than they need, that were then filtering out into supply chains, into smaller companies.

We've probably seen less of that in recent years and in the last sort of ten, fifteen years. So, yeah, I think that's probably where we're at, and the shortage is circa 180,000 young engineers a year.

2:14 Alex Edwards

Oh blimey, so yeah. It really, really is a big problem then, isn't it? And I know it sounds silly, really, but those sorts of skills, they're just gonna exit the industry with the time served engineers, aren't they?

Are there any other ways that people can sort of pass on the knowledge other than apprenticeships? Is there, you know-,  I'm trying to think of advancements in technology or automation. Is that sort of, can that help, or is that influencing the skills that are even required in manufacturing?

2:45 Adam Tipper

I suppose yeah. I suppose that's a key point, isn't it? It depends on the skill, the actual skills that are required and whether they are vocationally learned, whether you can only learn them by doing. And if you think with a lot of time served engineers, it's just knowing how to do something, isn't it? Because of solving a problem perhaps ten years ago. You know, I remember when we had this problem before. We solved that, and its intrinsic knowledge.

How do you train that? You know, that's what's being lost as well.

So with a lot of other sectors, they're probably more able than engineering to train more easily because there's less reliance on vocational learning and practical learning and more reliance on theory. So it's easier to train. Whereas within engineering, you know, probably a huge, huge, huge, proportion of the sector is definitely reliant on vocational learning.

3:43 Alex Edwards

Yeah. Well, I even myself, you know, I'm not an engineer by any stretch, but if I learn anything, I'm a kinaesthetic learner. You know? I need to actually get hands on, see how it actually happens and sort of try for myself. And I suppose you need that physical presence of the time served engineer with experience to show you that.

What do you think, I know you've mentioned about, you know, the difference in, how businesses have been going about it with training and what have you. Was there anything else that they were doing, in years gone by that helped? I know that, I'm trying to think back to sort of my days, when I was sort of choosing a career. And I can remember, you know, some of the local companies and stuff even coming to the schools and opening up for a sort of open days, almost that you could go in and actually see what a career in engineering or manufacturing actually looks like. What-, is there anything that can be learned, or is there anything that's, in your opinion, an effective way for companies to attract young talent today?

4:44 Adam Tipper

Well, STEM outreach and engaging with local schools, local colleges is a 100% a very smart thing for companies to be doing.

To answer the first part of the question, years gone by, if that was happening and coupled with a really high volume of apprenticeship opportunities, you know, with any and within any particular geographical area, you become the done thing, don't you? And, you know, if you think of teachers, careers leaders in local schools, they gravitate towards the done thing, because it's very hard for them to understand what exactly exists, employment opportunities, training opportunities on their doorstep, because they're so busy being teachers, being careers leaders in the world of schools.

So anything that can make it easier for them to understand what is on their doorstep and why it is a good choice for kinaesthetic learners or young people that are really into hands on stuff or problem solving or analytical or design led stuff, as well as the practical.

Anything that can make it easy for them to signpost to those employers and those opportunities is a very good thing, which brings me on to that STEM outreach. The number one challenge most engineering and manufacturing companies have in attracting early careers talent is employer brand awareness or lack of employer brand awareness, unless you're sort of Jaguar Land Rover, JCB, Rolls Royce. It's highly uncommon for many people in society to even know that a lot of the companies exist.

So, STEM outreach, getting on the radar of local schools, getting young people into factories is a very sensible thing to do.

6:25 Alex Edwards

Yeah. I think that point about how the industry communicates and markets itself, especially to a younger audience, like the channels it uses and whatever, is really relevant. I read a stat from a report, an Engineering UK in partnership with the Royal Society.

They found that, only 16% of girls think a career in engineering suits them. So there's obviously the gender issue, but then there's still only 44% of boys believe that a career in engineering suits them and sort of that, determination to sort of pursue a career that needs STEM subjects is, you know, dwindling.

What are your sort of thoughts on that and how the industry should be really sort of marketing itself to the younger crowd? Are there are there any challenges that you guys face? Or sort of to add to that I know NextGen Makers is doing a lot of great work in that space. How are you approaching it?

7:19 Adam Tipper

I think there are a lot of really- on the plus side, there are a lot of, really successful initiatives out there. You know, there are thousands of STEM outreach initiatives in the UK.

Organisations like Engineering UK and Enginuity, that are doing some great work in terms of, inspiring more young people to think about engineering as a career. Lots more engineering and manufacturing companies doing the STEM outreach as well to complement that. But you know, the fundamental challenge is you can't be what you can't see. So what we need to see is more relatable role models that are already enjoying an early start to a career through apprenticeships, you know, females, people from BAME backgrounds, for example, to outreach into schools, so that young people that are probably two, three years younger than them can see that they're having these positive experiences and believe that they could have those experiences themselves as well.

That's what we need. But that said, it is happening, and there is an uptick in females coming into engineering. And, engineering could be more diverse as a result of that, but it's just gonna take time. But we need, you know, high volume of activities required, the right kind of activity, relatable role models, and it will just take time to filter through.

8:39 Alex Edwards

Yeah. Yeah. That’s understandable.

It's good that the work's being done now, but like we say, it's not gonna be an overnight fix is it. It's gonna be, not a slow burn, but it's gonna take time to come to fruition.

So I obviously know a bit about Next Gen Makers, but for the viewers, do you wanna just give a quick background on you guys and how, your approach differs to maybe some of the other organisations out there?

9:04 Adam Tipper

Yeah. Absolutely. We're very, very unique. There's nothing else like Next Gen Makers in the whole of the UK, possibly even globally, because we have a national employer accreditation that recognises the best employers in the UK for engineering apprenticeships, but we help any company to get to that point.

You know, any company that wants to future proof through running a robust, scalable, well-structured apprenticeship scheme, through benchmarking and best practice sharing, we help any company to get to that point, understanding what great looks like from the successes of other engineering and manufacturing companies that are running high performing apprenticeship schemes that are delivering what the business needs. So it's, you know, recognising the best and then inspiring the next generation, in schools and colleges across the UK throughout our platform, by shining the light on the best employers for engineering apprenticeship specifically.

Because it's confidence. It's giving young people, parents, teachers, careers leaders, the confidence to say, do you know what? Company X Y Z is on our doorstep, and we know they've been validated by their existing engineering apprentices as a great place to work and a great place to learn and train. Why don't you have a look at what opportunities they've got and actually facilitating them to better signpost to those companies? That's part of the work that we do.

But at its core, we have this community of companies that are passionately and strategically committed to engineering apprenticeships and their apprenticeship schemes and want to be the best employers they can be. So we enable them to benchmark their approach, identify gaps, draw a line in the sand, and then learn from the from the successes of other companies to improve where they want to improve to, a, add more structure to their apprenticeship schemes, and, b, improve their apprentice experience, which increases retention.

10:57 Alex Edwards

Yeah. I was just gonna get into that point, but you've sort of mentioned it there about, you know, the apprenticeship experience. But I was gonna mention about how are you measuring or how do you go about measuring the impact of your work once you've kind of got the apprentices in? Is it just the sheer numbers of people on the apprenticeships, or is it more like the, you know, monitoring the duration and whether people are dropping out?

11:20 Adam Tipper

It's churn, isn't it? It's the most. Attrition is the most obvious barometer.

We about five years ago, before we started the engineering apprenticeships best practice program, which is that that best practice sharing initiative, we did a large-scale piece of research for about two hundred engineer and manufacturing companies that were running apprenticeship schemes. It was just at the start of the pandemic.

We looked specifically at the success rates of retention over a given number of years for those types of companies. And some companies were having amazing redemption rates, you know, in excess in excess of 95%.

Other companies were having really poor retention rates of early careers talent and their apprentice talent, and then a lot of companies were middling and somewhere in between.

And when we looked at the commonalities of what these successful companies were doing, how they were structuring their apprenticeship scheme, how they were approaching, you know, onboarding culture, how they, mentored and developed the talent, and then compared that to the companies that had poor retention rates.

What we've identified was, it was chalk and cheese. The successful companies had a lot of, were doing a lot of things in common, and the unsuccessful companies weren't doing those kind of things. So light bulb moment, it was case of wow.

Okay. So as long as we've got a community of engineered and manufacturing companies in the UK that want to become the best they could possibly be with apprenticeships running their schemes, why don't we just facilitate benchmarking against what great looks like and, help any company to engage in the community and learn from others that are sharing that best practice around. And that's how the engineered apprenticeships best practice program was born. And pretty quickly, after about three months, Make UK, the national manufacturing organisation, became our strategic partner, and backed it.

And with Make UK, we launched the employer accreditation about six months after that because they felt there was a real gap in the UK for, an accreditation that recognises exemplar employers specifically for engineering apprenticeships.

There are other accreditations out there and, you know, employer accreditations like Investors in People, which are, you know, great, but we've got a very specific engineering skill shortage. You see, it's absolutely imperative that we highlight that engineering is a great place to be, a great place to have and start a career. And you can only really do that by showcasing the kind of employers that go the extra mile in creating great opportunities for young people.

Alex Edwards 13:54

Yeah. I'm not surprised about the popularity of the, accreditation because it suits everyone really, doesn't it? You know, as a sort of ecosystem, a manufacturing ecosystem, you know, we're at we need, talent. We need we need people sort of in positions, whether that's, you know, you're a young apprentice that's wanting to start a career, whether you're running a business and that you need skills and sort of everything that's all around the industry and supply chain. We need sort of people in there. One way of showing the success and the interest is around the, skills conference that I know that you're running, fairly soon. I believe it's sold out now, hasn't it?

Adam Tipper 14:34

It has. Yeah. So we we've done this 2024 first time as a national event. 2023 it was a regional event just for West Midlands. But we're a national initiative, so it made sense for, having an in person event that was nationally focused.

So it's the end towards the end of October, 30th of October. It'll be that sort of day every single year, and it'll be a national event in the calendar at that point every single year. So I won't lie. I was getting nervous going national this year and ramping up the scale of it.

You never know, do you, these kind of things at the level of interest that might be out there? But we had a initial allocation of a 125 free tickets, and they went within the first three weeks. So, yeah, we were really, really pleased, surprised.

So we've up the capacity to, a 150 now releasing new tickets shortly. So, it should be a great event. We've got some amazing speakers from you know, covering topics like understanding Gen Z and Gen Alpha better from young people themselves, existing apprentices. So how can companies get a better understanding of that generation? Because it's very different.

You've got things like mental health and well-being in young people, which is, really important now considering a lot of the young people coming into the workforce is sort of the COVID pandemic generation that have had it pretty tough within those years in terms of social engagement and interactions.

You've got experts such as the Women in, Science and Engineering Society.

So, yeah, amazing amazing day, half day of networking, best practice, and insight sharing, all encompassing engineering skills related stuff.

Alex Edwards 16:18

Yeah. Well, it sounds brilliant. I can kinda see why it's been so popular.

With those additional sort of tickets that you've made available, we'll put the information for the viewers, to sign up around that.

Just speaking to some of the insight, you know, that you, that's gonna be at the, at the conference. I know that a large part of what you do is, sort of developing insight into the, challenge, but then also, like you say, into some of the sort of finer details, of the industries.

You recently created a report pretty much directly to the point, which is what do apprentices actually want, you know, which is sort of gold dust for, any recruiter.

What was your sort of key findings in that? How did you find that experience developing that report?

Adam Tipper 17:09

Well, we're fortunate because we've got, we've run the employer accreditation. So this accreditation is recognising companies that create a good apprentice experience that delivers on what apprentices want. And the, where we got the data from to create that report was the apprentice satisfaction survey that we administer as part of the accreditation process. So we're gaining a really detailed, view of the apprentice's experience in these companies and encompassing their well-being, their course, and their learning experience.

It's incredible insight for companies to get back themselves to further improve their apprenticeship schemes and experience. But it's also some good stuff that when you add up the high volume of companies that are involved in that accreditation process, as to then say, okay. We're getting some high level trends here. We're getting some high level themes. And that that content, that data is worth sharing as best practice with wider industry that want to learn from it. So that's understanding what apprentices want from their apprenticeship experience came from that and, as did the most common apprenticeship scheme best practices, which is another insight report. It’s that's kind of like a three part series that we're launching soon, along with Understanding Gen Z and Gen Alpha report.

And this is all free to access for the industry. I think it's really, really important that we make it free to access because. We're all about democratising knowledge and insight so everybody can learn and benefit from it. And it's part of our freemium membership, those three insight reports.

18:43 Alex Edwards

Yeah. I totally agree. You know, quite often, it could be tempting to gate this content, you know, for marketing purposes and, you know, lead generation and what have you. But particularly with this subject, it's, yeah, it's just about getting as many eyeballs and people onto the content so they can digest it and hopefully sort of put some of it into practice.

I know that in the, initial report about what apprenticeships actually want, poor company, poor in-company experience was a sort of major factor for apprenticeship, apprentices leaving.

What are some of the common mistakes that sort of lead to that poor, experience that that businesses are making?

19:27 Adam Tipper

Well, if we look at the main four things that apprentices tell us they do actually want from their apprenticeship, what are the most four important factors, contributing factors to a greater apprentice experience? Number 1 from our research was developing new skills, which kind of obvious given that that's the point of an apprenticeship.

But, you know, how do you facilitate that as an employer? You know, what does your training plan look like? What does the apprentices work plan look like? There's a lot to consider within that, in creating the great, learning experience. And when you when you consider that 88% of the apprenticeship is learning with the employer, that's hugely, hugely important.

Progression opportunities was the second most important aspect.

Feeling their contribution is valued was third, and feeling their well-being is parent prioritised by the employer was fourth. So, you know, just being able to better understand those four, sure contributing factors to create a greater purchase experience, hopefully, will set employers on a much better stead to actually invest in time and effort to, deliver on those factors.

In terms of understanding how to do it, that's really where the best practice sharing community and the best practice program comes in because we're sharing some incredible examples of companies that just nailed it.

And I think, you know, what, why do we exist as an organisation? We exist because there's a skill shortage in engineering. There is no other reason for us to exist other than we want to challenge that status quo. You know, we don't want that status quo to be as bad as it is for generations to come.

So that's our cause, and we're very clear on that cause. How do you solve the skill shortage in engineering in the UK? Two ways, influencers like parents, teachers, careers leaders of young people to recommend them, signpost to them to the sector. We've already covered that earlier in the podcast. But the other, sort of, stage of part of the solution, it is more companies offering apprenticeship opportunities within well run schemes that that retains the talent because, otherwise, we get a leaky bucket sort of situation where we put more young people, signpost more young people into the sector, but they're having bad experiences and leaving.

And, you know, that that was, that has been happening historically. You know, the piece of research I referenced earlier, the success rates were 2 out of every 5 apprentices retained across the board, you know, and there's some cost of a failed apprentice to a company with circa anywhere between £80 to £300k depending on the level and duration of the apprenticeship and, you know, time investment in onboarding, recruitment, training, mentoring.

22:13 Alex Edwards

Just goes to show you, doesn't it, the, for the good of the industry, but then even from a commercial sense, you know, for businesses, why they really need to start taking this seriously, you know, like you say, some of the losses there that can be attributed to the apprentices dropping out. Huge.

22:29 Adam Tipper

Absolutely. Yeah. Because and it's often disguised costs that people don't know they're incurring because, they've never thought to sort of measure it.

There was one company, an SME in Leeds, a medical device manufacturer in Leeds, and that's where the £300k figure came from. You know, they'd done that piece of research themselves. So we were asking them questions they'd already been asking themselves, and they were like, it's imperative we get this right because, a, we understand that why behind doing the apprenticeship scheme, and it's strategically important for future proofing the workforce, either creating skills new skills that we need that we don't have or we can't recruit from time served engineers for, or that we've got an aging demographic and we need to plug the gap. So they understood their why, which is fundamentally important for any company. I think it is to understand the why behind running an apprenticeship scheme before embarking on one or scaling one.

But then, you know, they understood the cost of getting it wrong to the business as well. And, you know, a lot of companies have never done that piece of work, but it is it is massive. You know? The average, as I say, was starting at £80k.

23:38 Alex Edwards

That's the starting figure, was it?

23:41 Adam Tipper

It was, between £80 and £300k, sort of like circa. Yeah. Again, it was mad. It was crazy. We couldn't believe it.

23:49 Alex Edwards

I didn't think it was gonna be that high, but, yeah, it's yeah.

It's kinda baffled me a little bit that as it's staggering.

23:56 Adam Tipper

If you think though, they-,  you've got training costs. That's one thing. Then, you know, then a lot of it might be subsidised, but it's more time. Time to recruit, time to onboard, time to mentor, time to do the internal training. You know? It's people cost, isn't it? And that is costly.

24:13 Alex Edwards

Yeah. In hindsight, when you put it like that, you can see how you can get to that figure, you know, relatively, not easily, but, yeah, you can see where it actually comes from, how it all adds up.

24:23 Adam Tipper

And if you putting a lot of time and effort into them, you know, it's gonna be more the figure's gonna be larger. So, yeah, I think, you know, in terms of the starting point for any companies that are looking to start an engineering apprenticeship scheme now, we always advise them if they join our best practice program and the community, spend a lot of time on that strategic piece, you know, the success- succession planning, the skills gap analysis, understanding the why behind, why you're using the apprenticeships.

And then from then on, you're in a much better place to sort of implement, learn how to implement a best-in-class scheme within the business.

24:59 Alex Edwards

So, in your opinion then, you're probably very well qualified to sort of give some advice for any young professionals who might be listening. What would be sort of one piece of advice that you'd, give some young professionals that are that are thinking about entering the- an a manufacturing apprenticeship?

25:18 Adam Tipper

Go for it.

It's an incredible place to work. You know, if you can find the right kind of role and the right kind of employer for you, it's an incredible career opportunity.

It's varied. It's so vast engineering. You know, whether you like to- an there is something for everybody. You know, whether you like to design things, make things, test things, fix them, analyse them. There’s a career pathway within engineering for every- everybody, every type of person? And you can't really say that, can you, for many sectors? No.

25:49 Alex Edwards

No. You always- I always think that, you know, when people are-  people will ask me, you know, what do you work in? Oh, manufacturing. And then you think it's such a lazy response because you can drill down so much deeper into it, And it's so nuanced. You know, you can be at various sort of parts of the supply chain. You can have different roles within the business to what you've just mentioned. So it really is a lot more diverse, and it's just about actually promoting that and getting more and more people to understand it.

26:16 Adam Tipper

Yeah. And, you know, within years nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, if the opportunities are there, the young person can go and see first time what it's like for themselves. It's amazing the amount of companies that, offer well-structured work experience schemes that that actually end up recruiting the next gen talent for them, the apprentice talent, because its back to my point earlier. If you can't see it, you can't be it. So, you know, getting out there or understanding what exists, not just what type of industry or what type of company, but the plethora of different roles within an engine-  one engineering business. It's incredible. But how would you know that if you just sat in a classroom?

27:01 Alex Edwards

Yeah. You've got no way of knowing, do you? And that's probably, like we say, contributing massively to the problem. In terms of the problem then while we're at the skills gap that needs addressing, Your opinion, what's the single most important action that needs to be taken to start bridging that gap today?

27:20 Adam Tipper

I think it’s back to that 2 phased approach of, promoting the sector, companies promoting themselves, STEM outreach, getting-  positioning it as a career of choice, a sector of choice, give people the confidence to want to come into it and recommend it, and secondly, more companies creating high quality apprenticeship opportunities for people to start their career.

Data's telling us now that because of the cost of living crisis, more young people and their parents are advocating vocational learning, as a an entry point, you know, next steps. So this is good. This is a strong wind in our in our favour.

You know, it's a good tailwind that that we need to capitalise on, but we can only capitalise on that if we've got employers with well run, well structured apprenticeships, creating good opportunities for those young people.

And that's the second phase.

28:15 Alex Edwards

Brilliant.

Well, that's all we've got time for today. Adam, thanks for, sharing the insight. And, just a reminder to everyone, thanks for listening, and you can head over to, any of the links that we've kind of got throughout the video and embedded in the, in the notes to work out how to collaborate more on some of the programs that Nex Gen makers are running in the coming months. Don't forget to subscribe to make sure that you never miss an episode and head over to the Protolabs.com website for more episodes.

That's all until next time. See you soon.