Supply Chain Professionals - A Call to Arms!!

So this week marks a couple of big anniversaries for me.  First of all, it is a year since JPS entered into a partnership with The Bluestones Group, and secondly, its 13 years since my eyes were first opened to the world of Supply Chain, when I joined RK Supply Chain Personnel as a wet-behind-the-ears trainee.

As often happens on these sorts of occasions, it has given me cause to reflect on my career and the years gone by.  I feel very grateful to have been given such a fantastic introduction to both supply chain and recruitment by the RK Group.  I was lucky to have fantastic mentors in Richard Robinson (the group owner) and my Divisional Director, Mark Williams (now “Mr LinkedIn” – an amazing trainer if you are looking to upskill your social media ability), and they taught me the foundations of what good recruitment looks like, on which I have been able to build JPS.

It was good timing that during this period of celebration and reflection, I was asked to attend a think-tank at Edge Hill University yesterday, to join a number of industry leaders in helping to create a new degree course in Supply Chain Management.  It summed up for me how far I have come from that rookie 13 years ago who had never even heard of supply chain.

The day was really interesting and got me thinking even more about the issues around talent shortage and how to attract new talent to the industry.

The day began with a presentation from a young engineer who worked for a major engineering company.  He started his career on a graduate programme with 120 other graduates.  Tellingly, there were no Supply Chain representatives on the scheme.  This for me highlights a major part of the issue our industry faces.  I blogged last week about the lack of Supply Chain professionals in executive positions and to me, this and the talent shortage are symptoms of the same problem.

Supply chain, logistics and procurement are undervalued and misunderstood across the world of business.

Kids do not enter into our industry because they either don’t even know that supply chain exists OR they believe a career in logistics to be about “trucks and sheds”, with no potential of career progression – a dead-end job.

This is exacerbated by the fact that supply chain, compared to engineering for example, is a fairly new concept.  So the people who advise students on what career choices are open to them don’t know about supply chain either.  OR they know about it, but don’t fully understand it.  How can someone sell the benefits of a career in something they have a very hazy understanding of?

The stark reality is that there are a predicted 1.2 million jobs forecast to be created in logistics from now until 2025 in the UK.  At this point in time, we are nowhere near being able to fulfil this demand.

So what is the solution?  How do we get fresh, young talent into our industry?

I think the answer lies in the current supply chain workforce.

I believe that WE the supply chain professionals of today, need to take ownership of the problem and go out and bang the drum about supply chain and logistics.  We need to create awareness of how amazing our industry is, and the multitude of job opportunities and career paths that are open to students who choose supply chain as their profession.

There is huge awareness of the talent gap in supply chain and logistics, I hear professionals talk about it daily and it is always one of the hot topics at industry conferences.  However, when colleagues visited the recent Skills Show at the NEC in Birmingham, Logistics and Supply Chain were severely under-represented compared to the likes of engineering and science-based occupations.  We need to be more savvy and understand that we are competing with these other industries for the best talent out there.

It is no good worrying and complaining about this massive issue, if we are not prepared to do something about it.

Supply Chain Professionals need to be proactive.  Visit local schools, give workshops on your industry.  Open up your company to site tours.  Forge closer links with Universities in your area – tell them what skills you struggle to recruit for so that they can train your future employees with the appropriate skill sets.  Offer apprenticeships and internships.

This problem will not go away.  The time has come to take action.  A Call to Arms fellow supply chain professionals! 

This is one in a series of blogs around improving recruitment within supply chain and logistics.  For more articles please visit www.jps-supplychain.co.uk/blog