Valuing the Jack of All Trades

Learning a Trade

I was dating a guy recently who is an electrical engineer. He came out of school in the mid-1990s and joined a YTS programme as a few of my friends did in the later ‘90s. He learnt a trade and now he’s self-employed and works predominantly in high security environments on the installation and maintenance of door entry systems. He commented once to me that he was ‘glad he had a trade’ especially I think in these uncertain times. He felt there would always be a need for him and his skills. And I am inclined to agree. He may have to adapt those skills as the technology changes, but engineers like him remain one of the UK’s greatest skills needs.

In my role as Policy Lead for the Federation of Small Businesses, I was asked to collect evidence for the Migration Advisory Committee on the proposed new immigration points system with the EU and the ￡30,000 salary threshold for working visas. The evidence from small businesses in the West Midlands was clear that this threshold would affect a significant number of our industries including manufacturing, agriculture, logistics (people and goods), and even software development. Not all of this work was seasonal fruit picking. Much was skilled work and our West Midlands businesses rely on being able to obtain these skills from the EU including welding, fork-lift operatives etc. with wages on average under ￡30,000.

As part of this work I also met with an immigration law specialist to discuss his thoughts and share the anecdotal feedback I had collected on the Tier 2 visa experience. I found it interesting that many small businesses feared the Tier 2 system and had heard negative stories from peers but had no direct first-hand experience. During our meeting, he also showed me the crucially important Appendix K. If you are like me and know nothing about visa applications you won’t know what that is but as soon as I saw it I saw how incredibly revealing it is about where we are in terms of skills shortages in the UK right now. Appendix K is the UK’s shortage occupation list entitling you to your Tier 2 visa and you can view it here - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-k-shortage-occupation-list

And boy do we need engineers!

And in my sector, we need the analysts, system designers, developers, and cyber security specialists.

You may be thinking this is all fascinating but what does it mean? And what can we do about it for our own businesses and for UK Plc? There is some great activity in this region already to grow our talent pipeline for the future including Digital Schoolhouse; WMG’s Engineering Academy; WCG’s Trident Centre of Product Design & Development; and Coventry College’s Fujitsu Hub among others. But in our new talent pipeline we are missing experience and all the soft skills that go with that. I once spoke to a national engineering firm about the skills needed for HS2 and he said we need to find a way to teach an 18 year old the knowledge previously gained through 15-20 years experience. Or we could take someone with 15 years transferable experience somewhere else and re-train them.

Master of Many Trades

I am self-defined as a Jack of all Trades but I don’t think that makes me a Master of None. In fact I think it makes me Master of my Destiny which is something I value above everything else in my life. I did an English Literature degree at Oxford University. I learnt how to code in HTML and SQL working for a publishing company. I learnt how to install Blackberry Servers. Now I plan and project manage improvements to IT systems for businesses. And along with my transformation, Emerald has performed its magic on others too. We have taken a Retail Manager from a chemist chain and turned her into our Technical Supervisor. We have taken a hairdresser’s receptionist and turned her into our Mobile Communications Operations Manager. We have taken a barista and turned him into the best Field Engineer you will ever encounter. That’s not hyperbole. Ask our customers. We took what they had from their existing experience and added a layer of technical expertise, understanding and patience, and some training budget. And we achieved transformation.

I shared a post recently about a Women Returners programme to IT. But it was only looking at women who had worked in IT before a career break and wanted to return. What about those of us who have worked in childcare, hair & beauty, hospitality, retail?  If we want more female engineers (only 9% of the engineering workforce are women) we can’t keep looking in the same place for skills and expertise and expect it to be a different gender. What can we teach someone who has managed the operations of several retail stores? Someone who has scheduled a busy hairdressing salon? Someone who has kept thousands of customers happy with the perfect coffee? They can already plan and deliver projects, engage with stakeholders, manage teams, and schedule works. A fast-track to civil engineering, electronic engineering, or IT system design will transform them into engineers before our eyes.

We are capable of many trades, not just one. Ask our Barista / Field Engineer who still enjoys making the tea and coffee for the office every morning.