CEO DIARIES
slows. Equipment still has to be certified in a downturn. The obligation on companies like ours is to build the pathway rather than complain about the shortage. That means taking on apprentices and trainees in numbers that exceed this year’s requirement, pairing them with the engineers who hold the undocumented knowledge before those engineers retire, and being clear that there is a route from van to depot to management. Several of our own senior people came up exactly that way.
WH Scott has been investing in training and developing people for over a century. Today, more than 40 employees are working towards apprenticeships, degrees and MBAs, and a number of colleagues who joined us straight from school now hold senior positions in the business.
What are your expectations for the industry going forward? Any trends or challenges that you foresee? Three challenges – and the third is not talked about enough.
The first is demographic. We are losing experience
faster than we are replacing it. A generation of engineers is retiring and taking with it a body of judgement that was never written down, and the intake behind them is too small. Every business in this sector will be affected, and the ones that have built structured training now will be the ones still able to staff a contract in five years. It is why we employ our own in-house talent acquisition specialist, why we are at the trade shows and running university workshops, and why recruitment and staff development sit together rather than in separate boxes. We have an aggressive plan. The second is the quality of what enters the supply chain. LEEA made this the theme of Global Lifting Awareness Day in July – not all lifting equipment is created equal – and they were right to. The most consequential decision in a lift is often taken weeks beforehand, at the point of purchase, by somebody in procurement who has not been given the information to judge what they are specifying. Uncertified and poorly documented gear is easier than ever to buy, and
Doyle sees three challenges facing the industry: demographic, quality control and digital compliance.
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