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A review of literature on employabilityskill needs in engineeringImren Markes aa Loughborough University, New Technology Institute, CEMECampus, Marsh Way, Rainham, Essex, RM13 8EU, UKPublished online: 04 Oct 2011.

To cite this article: Imren Markes (2006): A review of literature on employability skill needs inengineering, European Journal of Engineering Education, 31:6, 637-650

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European Journal of Engineering EducationVol. 31, No. 6, December 2006, 637–650

A review of literature on employability skill needs inengineering

IMREN MARKES*

Loughborough University, New Technology Institute, CEME Campus,Marsh Way, Rainham, Essex RM13 8EU, UK

(Received 14 December 2005; in final form 28 February 2006)

Encouraging skills development is a key part of the UK Government’s strategy. This emphasis onskills has led to changes in Higher Education, where there is an increasing recognition of the needto enhance students’ employability. This paper reviews the data on the type of employer skill needsavailable in the existing literature with a particular emphasis on those skills required by engineeringand manufacturing employers. Statistical data related to skill gaps in engineering and manufacturingin the UK and London/Thames Gateway are presented with the intention to determine whether andhow these relate to the employability skills and competences listed by various organisations. The paperarrives at a number of conclusions. In summary, for the ‘engineering and manufacturing workforceskills development’ ethos to become widespread in London (and the UK in general), a lot more needsto be done to understand the needs of industry to be able to develop provision that supports Londoners(and the UK citizens in general) in gaining appropriate skills in engineering. This can only be achievedthrough cooperative, inclusive, transparent and centrally coordinated approaches to skills assessment,monitoring and development.

Keywords: Engineering skills; Competencies; Employability; Skills

1. Introduction

Encouraging skills development is a key part of the UK Government’s strategy for improvingthe UK’s productivity performance. It is well documented (Curtis 2005) that around 20% ofthe UK’s productivity gap with France and Germany is attributed to the lack of UK workers’skills. Output per worker is reported to be 16% higher in France and 31% higher in the USA.The first large-scale survey of employers in Scotland, for example, showed 12,000 out of65,000 vacancies to be hard to fill because applicants lacked the necessary qualifications orexperience (THES 8.11.2002). The literature is full of sources (see e.g. DfES/DTI 2003)reporting on the Government’s drive to tackle the chronic lack of skills amongst adults inthe UK. With the launch of the Skills White Paper (DfES 2005) in March 2005, a number ofinitiatives to address this lack of skills were proposed. These concentrate mainly on the roleof the sector skills councils in helping employers to identify what skills they need, and the

*Email: DrIMarkes12@aol.com

European Journal of Engineering EducationISSN 0304-3797 print/ISSN 1469-5898 online © 2006 SEFI

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/03043790600911704

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proposal to launch joint private–public ventures called Skills Academies, whose primary aimis to act as a brokerage and help address these needs.

The emphasis on skills has also led to changes in Higher Education, which has always beena blend of vocational and academic elements in engineering. Within Higher Education (inthe UK and abroad; see, for example, Heitmann 2003; Pascail 2006) there is an increasingrecognition of the need to enhance students’ employability. As a result, and following therecommendations in the Dearing Report (HMSO 1997), all universities in Britain are expectedby the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and Universities UK (UUK) to offer students by2005/2006 a means of engaging in professional development planning. This emphasis onskills and competences is also reflected in the UK Standards for Professional EngineeringCompetence, UK-SPEC (ECUK 2004a), which replaced Standards and Routes to Registration(SARTOR 3) on 1 March 2004, as well as in the Subject Benchmark Statements for Engineeringof QAA (QAA 2000) and the (learning) outcomes driven approach adopted by EC(UK) in TheAccreditation of Higher Education Programmes launched in 2004 (ECUK May 2004b). Thisnationwide emphasis on skills and the (Government and other) funding available as a result hasgiven rise to a wealth of publications and tools reporting on the types of employability skillsshortages in Britain with various sources providing their own lists of skills for employability.

The aim of this paper is to review the data on the type of employer skill needs availablein the existing literature with a particular emphasis on those skills required by the engi-neering and manufacturing employers. The paper concentrates on the UK in general (withsome comparisons to Europe) and provides detailed data related to the Thames Gateway area,where the Centre for Engineering and Manufacturing Excellence (CEME) is based. Statisticaldata related to skill gaps in engineering and manufacturing in the UK and London/ThamesGateway are presented with the intention of determining whether and how these relate to theemployability skills listed by various organisations.

2. Employability skills

Employers have raised increasing concerns about the lack of suitably qualified candidates forvacancies in engineering and manufacture. There are sources (e.g. Curtis 2005) estimatingthat by the year 2012, there will be a need for two-thirds of jobs to be filled by people withA-levels or higher qualifications. Universities UK states (UUK et al. 2002) that ‘employabilityis about how individuals engage with opportunities and reflect and articulate their skills andcompetences’ and claims that employability development has three aspects:

1. the development of employability attributes,2. the development of self-promotional and career management skills, and3. a willingness to learn and reflect on learning.

The employability skills of graduates in general also apply to engineering and manufacturinggraduates. These skills are also called life skills, key skills, etc. (see, for example, HigherEducation Academy ESC 2005a,b) and are seen as important in the areas of engineering andmanufacturing as well. This section, therefore, concentrates on these skills for the purposesof comparison.

Although a possession of a degree itself is taken as evidence of intellectual prowess, AgCAS(2005) states that the range of transferable skills and experience are more important to thepotential employer. Many skills lists have appeared since the 1980s and judging from currentresearch these lists will continue to appear unless a more centrally coordinated approach toskills needs research/funding distribution is carried out. Table 1 presents a comparison between

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Table 1. Employability skills in the literature.

Middlesex HEA EngineeringUniversity (2003) AgCAS (2005) Heitmann (2003) Markes et al. (2004) DfEE (2000) Subject Centre (2005a)

• Personal and careerdevelopment,

• effective learning,• communication,• teamwork,• IT and• numeracy.

Further surveys haveshown that at the topof this list (whichusually emphasises

• teamwork and• written and oral

communication), is• imagination and

creativity.

• The ability to analyseinformation criticallyand produce creativesolutions toproblems;

• communication andcustomer-facingskills;

• initiative-taking;• ability to work on

your own and in ateam;

• computing skills andtechnical skills(CAD), visual andspatial awareness(added to these are:foreign language andinternationalmobility, knowledgeof industrialprocesses andtechniques, 3Dconceptual ability,commercialawareness, copingwith pressure anddeadlines as well asproject management,time managementand effectivenegotiating skills).

1. Personal and professionalskills and attributes:

◦ engineering reasoning andproblem-solving (with 5subskills);

◦ experimentation andknowledge discovery(4 subskills);

◦ system thinking(4 subskills);

◦ personal skills and attitudes(7 subskills and attitudes);

◦ professional skills andattitudes (4 subskills andattitudes)

2. Interpersonal skills:◦ Teamworking skills

(5 subskills);◦ Communication skills

(6 subskills).

Plus 32 conceive, design,implement and operatesubskills under 6 headings.

(66 skills under threeheadings in total).

• Key skills (communication,IT, working with others,application of number,improving own learningand performance, problemsolving),

• Personal and professionaldevelopment skills(self-management,organisationalmanagement, interactingwith others, professionalconduct/awareness,intellectual skills) and

• Technical skills (coreskills: tendering, managingcosts, project management,technical reports, technicaldrawings);

• Personal attributes(adaptability, assertiveness,creativity, initiative-taking,motivation and resilience).

Software RAPID—developedby Loughborough University:62 skills in total.

• Oral communication,• teamwork,• self-confidence (although,

in fact this a personalattribute),

• self-motivation andpresentation.

Essential skills:

• networking,• taking initiative,• creativity,• the ability to establish

collaborations,• negotiating and research

skills

Important skills: strategicplanning skills, timemanagement and IT skills.Most important skills (withhighest scores) for coursedevelopment:

• communication,• initiative and• self-confidence.

Skills of lower importance(with lowest scores):

• oral communication,• self-promotion,• time management and• IT.

A survey of employers in 1992indicated that the most importantskills from employers’ point of vieware:

1. effective communication (77%)2. teamwork (75%)3. ability to solve problems (62%)4. analytical skills (59%)5. flexibility (58%)6. numeracy (42%)7. use of IT (20%)

A later survey (1994) ranks personalskills/attributes as

1) willingness to learn,2) commitment,3) reliability,4) self-motivation,5) teamwork6) communication.

Employers’ skills for employabilityare then presented separately as:

• teamworking, networking• self-reliance; the ability to manage

own learning and recogniseprofessional development needs;action planning

• management processes (such asproblem-solving anddecision-making, negotiating).

(Continued)

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Table 1. Continued.

Qualifications and CurriculumAuthority (QCA) as also

identified by Dearing ESECT/Sheffield HallamDfES (2003) QAA (2000) EMTA (2005) (HMSO 1997) Shackleton et al. (2000) (2005)

• Basic skills(literacy, language,numeracy andcomputer skills),

• intermediate skills(at associateprofessional,apprenticeship,technician, skilledcraft or trade level),

• mathematics skillsand

• leadership andmanagement skills.

• Knowledge andunderstanding,

• intellectual abilities,• practical skills,• general transferable skills

(communication, IT,managing time andresources, teamworking,undertaking lifelonglearning for CPD)

together with the qualities of:

• creativity,• analytical skills,• being innovative,• self-disciplined,• self-motivated and• of enquiring mind,• being ethical and

enthusiastic.

• Multi-skilling and• greater flexibility,• the ability to deal with

change,• personal and generic skills

(again a very generaldefinition),

• new and specific technicalskills,

• computer literacy and ICTskills,

• customer service skills/customer awareness and

• ability to continue learning,reskilling.

• Communication,• application of number,• IT,• working with others,• improving own learning

and performance and• problem-solving.

At intermediate level

• Team leadership skills(including communicationand motivational skills) and

• the ability to think aheadand strategically,

at professional level,

• a combination of technicaland non-technical skills(including projectmanagement, peoplemanagement, commercialawareness)

at senior management level,

• leadership skills,• the ability to drive the

business forward,transform systems forcompetitive advantage.

• ‘higher-level’ academicattributes of analysis,critique, synthesis, lateralthinking (what employerscall ‘intelligence’ or‘creative problem-solving)

• knowledge (andunderstanding of coreprinciples in engineering)of the subject or relatedprofession

• self-skills (self-confidence,reliance, management, ableto cope, willingness todevelop)

• flexibility and adaptability• initiative and risk-taking,

together with theemployer-desiredinteractive attributes of:

◦ interpersonal skills,◦ teamworking and◦ written and oral

communication.

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HEA Physical Top 10 competencies required Top 10 competencies requiredSciences Centre HEA Engineering in current employment in UK in current employment in(2005) Subject Centre (2005) NCIHE (2005) (HEFCE 2001) Europe (HEFCE 2001)

• Problem-solvingskills,

• communication,• analytical skills,• data analysis,• critical appraisal,• time management,• teamworking.

• Communication,• leadership,• personal effectiveness,• problem-solving,• task management and• teamworking.

• Communication skills,• numeracy,• use of IT and• learning how to learn.

1. Working under pressure2. Oral communication skills3. Accuracy, attention to

detail4. Working in a team5. Time management6. Adaptability7. Initiative8. Working independently9. Taking responsibility and

decisions10. Planning, co-ordinating

and organising.

1. Problem-solving ability2. Working independently3. Oral communication skills4. Working under pressure5. Taking responsibility and

decisions6. Working in a team7. Assertiveness,

decisiveness andpersistence

8. Adaptability9. Initiative

10. Accuracy, attention todetail

(Continued)

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Table 1. Continued.

Centre of Engineering andManufacturing Excellence

THES (11.1.2002) ECUK (2004b) Evers et al. (1998) (CEME) (2005) London Riverside (2003) SEMTA (2004)

• Motivation andenthusiasm,

• interpersonal skills,• teamworking,• oral communica-

tion and• flexibility.

• Problem-solving,• communication, and• working with others,• the effective use of general

IT facilities, and• information retrieval skills,• planning self-learning and

improving performance, asthe foundation for lifelonglearning/CPD.

• Managing self,• communicating,• managing people and tasks

and• mobilising innovation and

change.

• Interpersonal skills• IT• customer handling• general communications• numeracy and• literacy.

Graduates lack in:

• teamworking,• project management,• negotiation,• people skills and• financial management

in a vocational context.

Skills required by employers:

• team working,• communication,• customer handling,• numeracy,• technical and practical

skills and• problem-solving.

• Teamworking skills,• project management and

planning skills,• negotiation skills,• people skills and• financial management

skills.

In the next decade for skillsdevelopment at levels 3 and 4continuous professionaldevelopment and lifelonglearning will need toconcentrate on:

• management andleadership in leanmanufacturing,

• managing innovation,• cross-functional

teamworking andleadership,

• project management,• workforce development,• teamwork and

communications.

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the lists of employability skills (required of graduates) produced by various organisations, allof which claim to have been produced in consultation with employers.

Table 1 suggests that, ‘there is no right way to foster student development- and henceemployability as all of this depends on systems, circumstances and context’ (HEA 2005). Itis no wonder, therefore, why so many different and thus confusing to the general public listshave emerged.

It is reported in the literature (e.g. Segal Quince Wicksteed Ltd/LETEC 2000) that com-panies are reported to have felt that the courses they were aware of were too general or toobroad for their needs. The reason for the general and broad nature of the training currentlyoffered/available could be due to the fact that majority of the research carried out does notinclude detailed enough data articulating skills. For example, Segal Quince Wicksteed Ltd(SQW) on behalf of LETEC and Gateway to Industry (GTI) used a questionnaire (SegalQuince Wicksteed Ltd/LETEC 2000, GTI/LETEC May 2000) asking employers to identifywhether or not they had gaps in the following skills areas:

• mechanical engineering,• electrical and electronic engineering, and• product design,

amongst others. Each one of the above is a profession, which, as described by UK SPEC(for engineering) requires/involves an extensive list of skills and abilities/competences and,therefore, the usefulness of the answers to questions in such questionnaires in tailoring trainingprogrammes is doubtful. For example, although a national skills task force study on engineering(mainly large) companies showed the industry to be in turmoil ‘as plants struggle to keep upwith the pace of changes forced upon them’ (Shackleton et al. 2000) research conducted byvarious (employer-led) organisations does not include the skill of ‘Managing Change’.

It is reported in the THES (1996) that ‘the training needs of industry and commerce arenot being met by colleges as few colleges conduct surveys of local business needs and littleattention is paid to skill gaps in the national economy’. This, once again, highlights the needfor a coordinated approach in detailed skills assessment, tailored to the company’s and indi-vidual’s needs training. This is also where employer-led organisations, whose primary aim isto provide support for employers, need to embrace and encourage the use of skills auditingand development tools (e.g. RAPID (Markes et al. 2004)), where detailed breakdown of skillsexists.

3. Some statistical data related to skills and employability

Engineering manufacturing accounts for more than a third of total UK exports and approxi-mately 1.63 million people are employed in over 70,000 engineering establishments in the UK(EMTA 2001–2005). LondonAnnual Business Survey 2003 (LDA 2003) reports that only 13%of London’s 300,000 + businesses are engaged in the manufacturing and construction sectors,with 7% being in manufacturing. This is similar to East London, where 7% of companies arein manufacturing (LDA 2003). The Engineering Council (EC (UK)) and the Engineering andTechnology Board (ETB) report in ECUK (2002) that 16% of establishments in London have acurrent vacancy, with half of these reporting them to be hard to fill. According to a survey car-ried out by London Skills Forecasting Unit (2003), 6% of manufacturing establishments havereported that their staff had skills gaps (approximately 337,000 jobs). Overall, the recruitmentdifficulty and internal skills gaps in London are reported to be similar to those for the rest

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of the UK, with

• 1 in 20 employers reporting gaps in basic skills (reading, writing, numeracy and oralcommunication),

• 3% reporting gaps in customer service skills,• 2% with gaps in teamworking (working with others),• 6% with gaps in IT, and• 4% with gaps in foreign language skills.

Seven hundred thousand Londoners are reported to have no qualifications, 23% are reportedto have low literacy and numeracy and 42% speak English as a second or additional language.

Forty-one per cent of employers state they carry out training/skill needs analysis of theiremployees; in other words, 68% of employees work in establishments that conduct skillsanalysis (with 38% of the smallest companies, 82% of the largest companies and 61% ofemployers providing public services). Skills training is reported to being provided in thefollowing areas (London Skills Forecasting Unit 2003):

• job-specific (69% of companies);• health and safety (56%);• induction (53%);• new technology (37%);• management (30%);• supervisory (26%);• customer care/service skills (20%);• first aid (19%);• sales skills (13%);• food hygiene (6%);• other (2%).

Only 15% of companies are reported (London Skills Forecasting Unit 2003) to accesse-learning, and only 29% of establishments report that training leads to qualifications, withthe majority (35%) leading to level 1, 20% leading to level 2, 12% leading to level 3, 7% leadingto level 4, 9% leading to level 5 and 17% leading to no NVQ-equivalent qualifications.

Sixteen per cent of establishments use Further Education (FE) colleges for training inLondon (London Skills Forecasting Unit 2003) – which is the same in the Thames Gatewayarea – with 19% of companies being in the manufacturing sector (including publishing), 19%being in the manufacturing sector (non-publishing) and 28% being in the construction sector.Twenty-two per cent of establishments report that the reason for non-use of FE college is:‘no relevant courses available’. Only 8% of engineering training is accessed from FE college.

In terms of links with external organisations: 18% of companies in London have links withHE, 20% have links with FE, 26% with schools, 18% with Business Link for London, 16%with the Chamber of Commerce and 9% with the National Training Organisations (NTO).When it comes to the types of links with HE, 17% of companies offer placements to HE, 19%offer placements to FE and 24% offer placements to schools. Only 3% of companies discusscourse content with HE institutions, with 80% reporting no links with HE, 78% with no linkswith FE and 72% with no links with schools.

In terms of the UK overall, it is reported (EMTA 2002) that hard-to-fill vacancies werein craft-intensive sectors (such as motor vehicles, aerospace, metal products and mechanicalengineering) and another area of recruitment difficulty is in the area of technicians in electronicsand aerospace and professional engineers in the electronics sector and construction. It isreported in the above reference that the skills of the engineering employers had most difficulties

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finding in professional engineers include:

1. technical and (other) practical skills;2. advanced IT and software skills;3. problem-solving skills

in order of difficulty.The EMTA Labour Market Survey (2002) found that the most frequently mentioned skills

gaps when also exploring technical deficiencies were for:

• Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machine operation (21%),• assembly line/production robotics (9%), and• general engineering (8%)

(whilst in 1999 these were for CNC machine operations, Mechanical Engineering andComputer-Aided Design (CAD)/Computer-Aided Manufacture (CAM)/Computer-AidedEngineering (CAE) (EMTA 1999)). This work also reports that 16%, 26% and 32% ofestablishments identified a gap between the skills of their workforce and the skills requiredto meet their business objectives in 2002, 1999 and 1998, respectively. In the engineer-ing manufacturing industry, the largest number of hard-to-fill vacancies were for craft andoperator/assembler jobs. In particular, welders and a wide range of CNC jobs were hard tofill. Hard-to-fill vacancies for design engineers, machinist, machine operators, sheet metalworkers, project managers and tool makers are also reported to have occurred in fairly largenumbers.

Work carried out by Warwick Institute for Employment Research and ETB (IER/ETB 2003)reports that graduate recruitment managers felt graduates:

• did not possess the level and depth of technical skills required by industry,• lacked ‘soft skills’ (social, communication and interpersonal skills), and• had poor business awareness (with poor management skills, and having theory but no

practise).

Important skills identified by the recruitment managers were identified as: project managementand management skills. It was, however, claimed that the exigencies of the production linetake precedence over an individual’s training plan.

Research commissioned by Gateway to Industry (GTI) and carried out by LETEC (SegalQuince Wicksteed Ltd/LETEC 2000) found that the proportion of the workforce in the NorthThames Gateway (NTG) area that were employed by companies not providing any trainingwas 33% and that the hard-to-fill vacancies in the three boroughs (Barking, Dagenham andHavering) accounted for 27% of those recruited and the proportion of the workforce with askill gap was 5% compared with 33%, 14% and 19%, respectively, for the wider NTG area.

The results of the research show that 40% of companies in the NTG and 22% of those in thethree boroughs expressed an interest in being contacted regarding upskilling/training offeredby the GTI. The research also shows that only 5.4% of companies were experiencing trainingdifficulties (training in technical skills) with 9% being interested in identifying skills gaps,13% experiencing recruitment difficulties with 45% of companies reporting that they werelikely to recruit unskilled/inexperienced people. The report identifies that in this area 39% ofcompanies report no identified skills gaps and no need for training, with only 2% with a skillgap (and not likely to train), 33% with skills gaps and likely to train. The above percentagesemphasise the need to facilitate articulation of skills in companies to enable them to identifythe skills gaps and training needs of their workforce. This is in agreement with the findings ofSmith and Howe (Smith and Howe 2000) whose research on small and medium enterprises

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(SMEs) in London reports on how difficult it is for employers to ‘precisely assess the natureof their skill problems’ resulting in a lack of perception of training (and thus upskilling) need.The report in (Segal Quince Wicksteed Ltd/LETEC 2000) states that there is a need for trainingto improve:

• Non technical skills, including◦ management of people and business,◦ business development skills,◦ marketing skills,◦ regulations,◦ IT support and◦ customer care, and

• Technical skills:◦ new technology,◦ advanced technology,◦ theory.

All of these relate directly to employers and businesses’needs rather than employees’develop-ment/lifelong learning/own training needs, which again is in agreement with the findings ofSmith and Howe (2000), who conclude that ‘upskilling is initiated by management decisionsin companies or by individual staff appraisals’, in response to company (usually immediate) –and not employee – needs. Smith and Howe (2000), on the other hand, have looked on the typeof skill deficiencies notified by employers in the London East TEC (LETEC) area and report,based on LETEC data, that the main gaps experienced by employers were:

• technical/job-related skills (33%);• computer literacy/user skills (31%);• customer handling (8%);• team working (6%);• personal skills ( 6%); and• management skills (5%).

Smith and Howe (2000) conclude, however, that, based on employers’ feedback, ‘skills gapsare a feature of lower level, rather than higher level occupations’and that as such there are skillsgaps (and thus the need for training) in the areas of generic skills (numeracy, literacy, personalskills, IT skills); vocational/job-specific skills; management skills (strategic planning, busi-ness planning, time management, effective delegation); customer and people skills (marketing,selling, customer care); finance skills (budgeting, cash-flow, cost control, book-keeping),IT skills and other skills (legal issues, health and safety and first aid). Their conclusion worry-ingly implies that there is no need for skill development at higher-level occupations, despitetheir finding that upskilling is initiated by those in higher-level occupations, i.e. management,and despite the SEMTA (2004) findings detailing the skills shortages in higher-level occupa-tions. The London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, however, are reported to have thelowest proportion of the workforce holding NVQ level 3 or above in Greater London, whichmay explain the reasons for the conclusions of Smith and Howe (2000).

4. Discussions and conclusions

The following can be concluded from the review of the literature carried out in this paper.

• If anyone with any level of interest in skills starts by looking at existing practice, he/sheis likely to find (just as the author of this paper did) an overwhelming list of publications

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with numerous lists of skills produced by universities, skills development agencies, sectorskills councils, various local establishments (e.g. LDA, London Riverside Ltd, CEME Ltd),all of which are claimed to have been prepared in consultation with employers. All of thisis more than likely to confuse and discourage any consideration of skills assessment andupgrade. The available research works and skills auditing and development tools use dif-ferent lists and number of skills (breakdown if any) and different terminologies, whichmakes it impossible for meaningful comparisons to be conducted, meaningful conclu-sions to be drawn and meaningful assessments to be carried out. There is an increasedneed for a common terminology used in employer-led/FE- and HE-led surveys to articulateengineering/graduate/employability skills in detail.A comparison of the extensive lists pro-duced by academic establishments and those produced by other organisations (e.g. SSDA,SSC, CEME, LDA) shows that those produced by non-academic establishments do notinclude the detailed articulation of skills, which is evident in the lists (and skills audi-ting and development tools) produced by HE institutions. Considering that only 18% ofcompanies in London have links with universities (GTI/LETEC 2000), the above differ-ences are not surprising. The analysis of the work reviewed in this paper suggests that forsuccessful skills development there is a need for:◦ Greater interaction/collaboration between universities and companies to enable skills

auditing and development tools that best address employer (and employee) needs. Thisis likely to remove the differences in terminology as well as lengths and contents of thevarious employability skills and attributes lists that most students, graduates, employeesand citizens find confusing and off-putting. It was mentioned in section 2 that only 16%of companies in London use FE colleges with the reasons for non-use being the lack ofrelevant courses. Greater interaction will also enable all (including employers) to betterarticulate the skills gaps and shortages enabling HE and FE colleges to develop a moretailored approach in meeting employer upskilling needs through education and trainingmost suited to their needs.

◦ Greater interaction between HE/FE and various skills agencies. This will eliminate thedifferences between skills terminologies employed (e.g. between ‘mechanical engineer-ing skills’ used by LDA and SEMTA as opposed to the articulated range of skills that fallunder the ‘mechanical engineering’ category, as used by academic institutions (e.g. thosein RAPID developed by Loughborough University)). This, in turn, will help clarify theconfusion on current existing qualifications, skills and competences in engineering. SkillsAcademies need to provide thorough and detailed analyses of labour market informa-tion, in close collaboration with FE and HE to enable businesses and the public sector toidentify their workforce upskilling needs.

◦ More reliable base of information on labour market and skill needs. Labour marketinformation is not detailed enough to support specific course planning. There is evidencethat businesses lack in understanding of the skill (and qualifications) levels required in themedium and long term. The majority of skills surveys (e.g. London Production IndustriesCommission 2004) come up with 7–10-year projections of the likely skills shortages andtraining needs over future years, although it is widely recognised that in reality a fewbusinesses are likely to have thought beyond their immediate need for the next year. Itis clear, however, that such future training needs are a function of changes in numerousfactors including, for example, the technology and Research and Development industries,markets, legislation and investment and their usefulness is, therefore, doubtful. Thisresults in unidentified skills shortages or gaps (thus the reason for 39% of companies inLondon reporting ‘no identified skill gaps’), which are impossible to address. The aboveis evident from the lack of detailed skills breakdown information collected in variousresearch projects the findings of which are too general and thus of limited use in planningpresent and future training.

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• Employers want graduates who can help them deal with change and it is not sufficient forHE institutions (HEI) and graduate applicants to simply list the skills they have developed.Enhancing employability requires a holistic approach integrating knowledge, work expe-rience and technical and interactive skills development and reflecting on how these canmeet the needs of a flexible organisation. Otherwise, there is the danger of, for exam-ple, ‘employers ending up with employees who are highly competent in teamworking andproject management skills but lack in the knowledge and understanding of what the projectis all about’. Efforts to increase employability need to be holistic, strategic and based onclose collaboration between HEIs, employers and government. The holistic approach isalso likely to change the mindset/attitude and win the support of the academic and businessworld and decrease the perceived antipathy towards skills development in general.

• The available literature indicates in detail that there are differences (mainly in terminology,number and also in the order of skill prioritisation) between what various (engineering andmanufacturing) employers and various organisations/institutions consider graduate skillsfor employability. To avoid confusion and thus eliminate the perceived antipathy towardsupskilling, there is a need for accepted and recognised-by-all, generic, core ‘graduate skillsfor employability’ applicable to all graduates, irrespective of their discipline. It will then beup to each discipline and individual engineering company to identify and ensure – with thehelp of the relevant Skill Academies – the development of education and training aroundany additional specific key competencies that are required for specific disciplines and jobswithin the company. This requires a coordinated approach to skills needs assessment andtraining provision and thus a central coordinating body that can act as a one-stop shop,consolidating research and dissemination efforts so that there are fewer, larger projects,based on a common and shared-by-all terminology, tailored to better meet employers’ andemployees’ needs.

In summary, therefore, for the ‘engineering and manufacturing workforce skills develop-ment’ ethos to become widespread in London (and the UK in general), a lot more needs tobe done to understand the needs of industry to be able to develop provision that supportsLondoners (and the UK citizens in general) in gaining appropriate skills in engineering. Thiscan only be achieved through cooperative, inclusive, transparent and centrally coordinatedapproaches to skills assessment, monitoring and development.

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Dr Adam Crawford at the final draftingand proofreading stages of the manuscript.

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About the author

Imren Markes is a Senior Lecturer in Product Design and Engineering at Middlesex University.She took a two-year secondment (2004–2006) to work as Skills Development Co-ordinator inthe Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Loughborough University.

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She received her BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 1985 and her MSc in MechanicalEngineering in 1989 at Istanbul Technical University in Turkey, and her PhD in MechanicalEngineering in 1993 at Staffordshire University in the United Kingdom. After graduating in1985 she worked as ResearchAssistant at Istanbul Technical University and as Senior ResearchAssistant at the University of Wales in Swansea. She took her position of Lecturer in the Schoolof Engineering Systems at Middlesex University in 1996 and her position of Senior Lecturerin 1998.

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