Back in 2013, I wrote about the skills shortage in UK engineering. As it turned out, the main challenges – an ageing workforce retiring and taking with it key skills and product knowledge, coupled with a lack of new talent rising through the ranks – were not limited to one sector. I’ve since heard similar tales from manufacturing, technology and construction. Years on, the situation has not changed much. A recent study from Barclays and The Manufacturer revealed that 75% of responding manufacturers saw a shortage of skills as the biggest barrier to growth. A whopping 97% agreed that hiring and retaining skilled labour presents a challenge.
I am no recruitment expert, and I appreciate that the issues involved are multi-faceted. I know that industrial marketing alone is not going to solve the problem – far from it. However, I suspect that lots of industrial marketing departments underestimate the role they can play in attracting staff with those much-needed skills.
The UK’s industrial skills gap
Places for People and Cambridge University report that Britain’s construction industry now has 140,000 vacancies. The lack of skilled workers is delaying projects and causing firms to miss out. Meanwhile, just 20% of construction workers are aged under 30 and fewer than 50% of construction apprentices complete their training. Yet the UK needs a million more construction workers by 2032. These figures suggest that industrial marketing needs to pay greater attention to recruitment and skills shortages.
What is more, this situation is echoed across multiple sectors. The Recruitment Co. reports a lack of welders and metal workers, skilled machinists, HGV drivers, FLT drivers, LLOP drivers, supervisors and managers and quality control personnel. Recruitment is also challenging in technical and scientific businesses.
This has implications. Firms that cannot recruit or develop skilled workers risk losing productivity, growth and even long-term survival. Meanwhile, the laws of supply and demand dictate that the harder skilled people are to find, the more they will expect to be paid when you hire them.
People want to hear about industrial jobs and skills
Let’s start with the good news. There are lots of people – specifically, young people – looking for a foot on the ladder. Youth unemployment is an issue in the UK. According to City and Guilds, in 2022 youth unemployment stood at 13%, with around 859,000 18-to-24-year-olds not in work or education. That’s a lot of potential creativity and skills. Add to that the graduates coming on to the job market each year and you have a large pool of job seekers.
Incidentally, as someone who taught in a pupil referral unit years ago, I beg you not to assume that there’s a huge gap between unemployed youth and university graduates in terms of employee potential. The kids I taught had been expelled from mainstream schools, but some were exceptionally bright. Even those who struggled with the school environment could become focused and creative when a task caught their attention. When we went to the local FE college for practical lessons: bored and listless youngsters became focused and enthusiastic learners, because they saw the value of what they were learning (bricklaying and plastering). Sadly, most seemed to expect little from the employment market, and the City and Guilds research suggests they had a point. But with guidance and training, young people like that can become great assets to skills-starved businesses.
Incidentally, some years later I worked for a publishing company that recruited graduates. Ultimately, I added a spelling test to my interview procedure because despite their beautiful (spell checked!) CVs, some of them couldn’t spell if disconnected from a computer. That’s a bit of a problem in an editorial office. I had exactly the same problem when I worked in corporate comms. When it comes to potential, the gap between school-leaver and graduate can be vanishingly small.
In short, there are many people of various ages looking for an opportunity. Not all of them will make good employees for your business but some will. So why are these people not beating at your doors? Lots of reasons: they don’t understand what you do, or the skills you need and can teach them. Perhaps they really want to be a YouTuber right now but in a year or two they will need a viable career, in which case you need them to think of your company first. Perhaps your business looks forbidding or they think it only wants people very different to them.
You can correct these misapprehensions, and free up the skills pipeline, with good industrial marketing.
Using industrial marketing to ease the skills gap and recruitment
To appeal to potential staff, you need above all to build a strong brand. Branding is not just for sales, nor is it just your style guide and logo. Branding is the sum of all those intangible impressions, ideas and memories that your business evokes in its audiences. It sets you apart from the competition and makes you appealing. This Hubspot guide has more detail and some practical tips on branding.
If you do branding well, your brand will draw in potential employees. They will start their job search with you, rather than the competition. However, just like recruitment, branding is a continuous, active process that is never complete. You must constantly show potential staff what you do, how you do it, what your company culture is and what you can offer them. Here are some ideas:
- If you offer apprenticeships, lifelong learning and/or on-the-job training (and why would you not, in the face of a skills shortage?) then promote these for all you’re worth because they are valuable currency to young job-seekers. Email your local media with ready-written stories about your apprentices’ success; sponsor a local sports team and publish stories in their match programmes; bedeck your website and socials with pictures of smiling, successful students and get those students to tell their friends.
- Look at your marketing channels – do they address potential staff or just potential customers? You must speak to, and with, both. You might find my guide to marketing for personas useful.
- Many of the people you need, who would make great employees, will currently know little to nothing about what your business does. Be enthusiastically transparent and open about your business. Make videos about your work, job roles, processes. Explain what you do and the skill sets you need. Put all of these on social media. Start a YouTube channel and tell viewers what you offer in terms of training, work experience and career progression. Many people are looking for such information; make it easy for them to find.
- Go wherever your potential recruits are. For many young people, that’s social media. Can you make fun and/or interesting TikToks or YouTube shorts that are (a) shareable and (b) link to longer, more brand-promoting content? If you need more experienced workers, then LinkedIn, the trade press and associated websites may be a better option. You can be in all of these places at once while maintaining your brand identity.
- Engage with people, particularly if you rely on a local workforce. Go to schools and colleges of all stages and types; you are building for the long term and today’s primary school kids will be your apprentices tomorrow. Invite schools, Scouts and Guides and local clubs to tour your premises, explain what you do. Sponsor teams and events, talk to the press. If you’re a construction firm, run a fun bricklaying contest. If you create SaaS, set a coding challenge for local schools. Write up the story for your website and take it to local media. Brand yourself clearly as a friendly, inclusive business.
- Speak to each audience’s values. Many people want a career that is socially useful, so highlight your sustainability and the benefits your work brings to people’s lives and the economy.
- Work with the media. Be quick to correct adverse impressions (for example, respond to feedback on your social media pages and in the press) and actively provide compelling stories. Get your company known to local journalists as the expert in your particular field. That way, if they need information for a story you are their first call and gain welcome publicity in return for your help.
- Remember that you are playing a short-, medium- and long-term game. If you register in a person’s mind today, they may not act upon that knowledge until they want a new job in a couple of years’ time. But if your business is to thrive, you will still need them then – and the marketing will have paid off.
Conclusion: industrial marketing is a very useful tool
Industrial marketing alone will not solve your skills and recruitment problems, but it can make a substantial impact, especially if you work with your HR department to target specific groups and job roles. And if you need any copywriting to strengthen your industrial marketing, including web copy and social media posts, just contact me.
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