Robertson says we are therefore likely to lose about an eighth of our total workforce. But he is surprisingly optimistic about this, because it presents a real opportunity provided we train more people. He believes the Apprenticeship Levy will incentivise this.
Balfour Beatty’s report raises the same concerns about loss of skills from the EU, but is less optimistic about the short term because it can take a decade or more to train a highly-skilled specialist engineer.
“Uncertainty around the free movement of labour in the EU could increase the industry’s recruitment and staffing difficulties, as it may no longer be able to handpick highly-skilled engineers from other EU countries as is currently the case.
“In November 2016, more than 10% of the Balfour Beatty workforce held non-British EU passports, and around 11% of new recruits in 2016 held non-British EU passports. Around 100 of our 2016 recruits came to us via a proactive campaign targeting Greece and Portugal, with a further 40-50 expected in 2017.
“In our supply chain and the people who actually build tomorrow’s infrastructure, the proportion of non-British EU workers is even higher. Only 0.2% of our 2016 recruits come from outside the EU, due to the complexity, cost, administrative burden and time delays required in managing the current points-based sponsor licence system. There is also currently a global shortage of engineers.”
The latter point makes Robertson’s view that we have an opportunity to ‘grow our own’ even more vital - perhaps we need an element of pain to incentivise change.
Technology advancements such as the implementation of the Digital Railway and the introduction of new trains will require us as an industry to have more highly-skilled people, either by training new people to a higher level (something that is already under way by the creation of new apprenticeship standards) or by the upskilling of the existing workforce. So signalling engineers become digital signalling engineers, for example.
Digital skills are also in short supply, so this is not an easy task. Robertson’s advice on this is simple - we need to increase the skill levels of the current workforce because the current levels will not serve us well in the future.
However, he thinks that Brexit could have a negative impact on rail’s wage inflation issues: “Immigration has kept wages lower than they otherwise would have been in the construction and semi-skilled sectors (not in the rail specialist sectors). It has been easier to take on Eastern Europeans rather than innovating and trying to do things differently. So in many cases we have continued to do the same thing, the same old ways, but we’ve got Polish people to do it. Brexit will mean they have to do something differently.
“Many are now working to create the long-term view through the Industrial Strategy - because you will not invest in new ways of doing things or in training people unless you have a reasonably confident view of the future. That’s the most important question - how can we create long-term confidence so that people can invest in kit and people?”
NSAR’s baseline study will give the industry the best springboard it has had in a long time to incentivise and assist credible action on skills. But it will be just that - a springboard - for others to take action from.
“I’ve been doing this sort of stuff in different sectors for a long time, and it is the most exciting time I’ve had in a long time. Because we’re really making a difference,” says Robertson.
“The framework is in place. The strategy is in place. People just need to roll up their sleeves and just bloody get on with it. It’s good to see that many already are.”
