Like many of you, I keep hearing that we need to find a way to bring new people into the window, door and glazing industry as the age profile across it continues to increase. It is the same story in many other hands-on industry sectors. It is almost a reflection of society in the UK I guess where, by common consent, we have got an ‘ageing population’.
I’m not suggesting for one minute that the window and door industry is past it – far from it – it remains vibrant, full of great products, new innovations, and the opportunity for career longevity; but one thing that does concern me is the lack of young people coming into the sector as the first step on their career path, and the lack of young people transferring into it from other industries.
Career path development
Why does our industry not automatically attract young people? Don’t school leavers see our industry as a viable career? Is it perhaps because as an industry there hasn’t been the employer backing for the available, structured qualifications and formal training, preferring instead to go for a less formal hands-on approach? Has the lack of qualification implementation offered by the industry become detrimental to attracting new blood? Do we as an industry understand what today’s young people value in terms of career-path development and are we offering it?
The truth is I don’t know the answer. What I do know is this; investment in people is proven to deliver long term benefits to the employer and the employee. Better training leads to better motivated staff – staff who are better able and better qualified to carry out their roles – and reduced staff turnover. Ultimately this should translate into the delivery of better quality and service to the end user which of course should in turn bring more business.
Attracting young people
As many of you know, we here at GQA are passionate about people development and recognition, and our qualifications, allied to the introduction of the MTCs – Minimum Technical Competencies – should be the perfect opportunity for the industry to progress and ultimately to attract young people to our industry who will then very much view it as a career rather than just a job – there is a distinction.
I firmly believe that if the industry invests in training it will get its rewards.
In the very near future we are going to be talking to key players in the industry about forming partnerships and developing programmes to help young entrants to our industry to learn; we want to engage companies to become ambassadors for training – maybe to provide facilities in the shape of Learning Pods, to enable people to be trained off the job and not just on it.