With green blankets covering the buildings and cranes slicing through skylines serving as a constant reminder of Britain’s building boom, it can be difficult to imagine that the commercial building industry is affected by the economic crisis. The fact that the industry is not cutting back - while other industries are - seems to indicate the explosion of new construction works have not come to an end. The problem, it seems, is a lack of workers to fill the demands of construction companies.
The dearth of skilled construction workers becomes most apparent when looking at last year’s figures. 13,000 building projects were initiated in 2007 alone, and in order to support these projects, some 18,600 labourers were needed. The deficiency in skills is therefore widespread, expanding from the trade to the non-trade. Within trades, the highest annual requirements come from the wood and the electrical trades, but demands are also high for brick-layers and construction specialists. In the non-trades, construction managers, business processing managers, architects, office-based IT recruits, and technical and professional staff are among those on high demand.
This worrying dearth is primarily due to three reasons: 1) As a result of the building boom; 2) the dwindling numbers of East Europeans in the trade; 3) the misperceptions of recruiters about what construction work involves.
The first reason, which was discussed previously, is relatively obvious - the more construction projects there are, the more recruits that need to be hired to do the job.
As the British trade has been largely dominated by highly-skilled Polish workers over the years, the impact of Poland’s recent economic boom has driven many Poles back to their home country, which is a big loss for British construction companies.
The third reason that the UK is experiencing a worker shortage is due to recruiters’ misconceptions of what construction work actually entails. Many job hunters perceive builders as hard-hats limited to a construction site, while in reality, a lot of construction jobs are often managerial or office-based.
Numerous steps have been taken to compensate for the lack of recruits in the trade. One approach adopted by companies is to break the predominantly white and male-dominated construction trend by trying to recruit women and individuals from various ethnic groups as well. The National Association of Women in Construction is an example of a company that widens the recruiting net, in order to target groups with a larger range of skills and work ethics. This also creates a more diverse work place, and allows for fresh ideas to be introduced into the industry.
A way of increasing the number of graduates in the construction trade is by getting children interested at a young age, as the Sustainable Employment Legacy Forum and Inspire Scholarships programs have done. They not only organise trips for children to visit construction sites, but they also offer student funds, apprenticeships, and training courses to people in the poorer outskirts of London, providing younger generations with great initiatives to join the industry.
An alternative way to gather recruits is to change the way in which the industry is viewed. By making the public aware of the fact that construction work is not just about hard hats and light-reflecting mesh jackets, more people might consider construction as a career.
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