Britain's Lost Engineers

Oxford Intelligence Research (London, England) shows more than half of UK workers with advanced engineering skills have been lost to the industry. 58 per cent of the UK's most highly-trained and experienced engineers are not using their specialist skills at work, according to the research. Oxford Intelligence is a research-led consultancy focused on foreign direct investment strategies for governments, international corporates and economic development agencies.

In the week when the Engineering UK 2009/10 Report confirms that Britain needs to recruit almost 600,000 engineers up to 2017 to remain globally competitive, this new survey of advanced engineering skills across Western Europe shows that more than 1.5 million UK engineers are not using their specialist skills at work.

The findings are part of the Oxford survey The Western European Location Skills Audit©. "Our study has identified a significant number of people that have effectively been lost to our engineering sector. While we look at ways to bring new talent into the industry, our report suggests we should be focusing on plugging the gaps that are leading to the loss of engineering skills" said business development director Jonathan Davidson.

The survey considers a range of factors that could be creating this gap, including salary, gender and location-based factors. Understanding why engineering has lost nearly 1.5 million skilled people could not only help the sector retain talent, it could also reduce the cost of expensive training initiatives aimed at filling the void.

Davidson added "We set out to identify the current availability of talent as well as allowing us to profile the workforce and develop support for economic development and corporate location planning. While we identify that 1.5 million have been lost, that doesn't mean they can't be encouraged to come back to the sector. This could be a win-win for the government and the industry if we could develop policies that encourage people with an existing level of skills, training and experience to return to the profession."

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