As the defence sector declines following government spending cuts, Nissan and Siemens support the launch of a new system to ensure valuable skills are retained within the manufacturing sector.
Nissan and Siemens yesterday initiated a new recruitment system in north-east England which matches defence workers who are facing redundancy to alternative career opportunities in engineering and advanced manufacturing.
Skills shortages are a common concern for manufacturing companies. But while apprenticeships have been targeted by government as a root to recruiting new talent into the sector the loss of existing skills when individual sub-sectors shrink is a major and immediate problem.
Ian Godden, CEO of ADS the trade association for defence and aerospace companies in the UK, has said that he anticipate 20,000-30,000 jobs will be lost in the defence sector over the next 3-5years.
The Talent Retention Solution (TRS) is a web-based service developed by the Skills and Jobs Retention Group (SJRG) in paternership with manufacturing sector skills council, Semta.
Nissan and Siemens are both memebers of SJRG and have committed to sponsiring the TRS.
Senior representatives from Nissan, Siemens and Semta, including the SSC’s chairman and industry veteran, Allan Cook, are personally involved in promoting TRS.
Manufacturing and engineering enterprises in the North East region were welcomed to a launch event for the TRS at Gateshead College’s new Skills Academy for Sustainable Manufacturing and Innovation.
Allan Cook, CBE said of the new web service: “This new web based talent retention system will assist businesses in the high growth engineering and manufacturing sector to recruit the staff they need to compete successfully in the international market.
“With leading companies like Nissan and Siemens partnering, we have true employer ownership to solve a problem affecting the public and private sectors and the talented people they employ.”
TRS will become fully operational by January 2012.
