TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS CRISIS
An article by Elaine Watson originally published in Food Manufacture on 13th August 2007
The skills shortage in technical roles is such that one in five food manufacturers does not have a permanent technical manager on the pay roll, according to recruitment firms, technical consultants and interim managers interviewed by Food Manufacture.
Although no official figures are available, one manager working on a temporary contract at a chilled food manufacturer said retail customers were complaining that 20% of their suppliers did not have a permanent technical manager.
He added: “New people are not coming into the profession while at the same time people are leaving the industry completely or going into interim work, where they can earn considerably more money. When it comes to specification writing, you can pretty much name your price. The interim management market in this area is really burgeoning.”
Liz Patterson, business development director at leading consultancy and laboratory services provider Bodycote LawLabs, said she would “not be surprised” if 20% of technical management roles were vacant or filled by people on temporary contracts. She added: “I don’t know the figures, but there is a real shortage of people in the technical marketplace at the moment and it’s becoming increasingly hard to find people with the appropriate experience, especially as people’s demands are so product and sector specific. Lots of people are also leaving the profession as they are fed up with the growing pressures and demands and the lack of flexibility.”
The workload of a technical manager had grown considerably in recent years, she added. “Take product specifications. They used to be a couple of pages long. Now they can run across 37 pages. When you couple this with the fact that products have to get to market so much more quickly than they used to, it’s easy to see how this places increasing demands on the technical department. On top of that you are always wondering if another crisis like Sudan-1 is around the corner.”
The skills shortage was in turn driving the interim recruitment market in technical management, with experienced professionals able to earn far more cash by doing contract work, said Nigel Billinge at recruitment consultant RHL.
The average day rate for an interim technical manager was £250-£350, explaining why it was such an attractive proposition, he said. “You can earn some serious money if you have the right skills and you are prepared to live out of a suitcase, and more and more people are doing it.”
Fredericka Roberts, senior consultant at food recruitment specialist Jarvis Johnson, said: “There has been a real shift in the technical area over the last year and suitably experienced technical people are in very high demand. We have had to take on extra staff just in the last six months just to cope with the increasing workload in this area. The demands in chilled foods are particularly high and clients are really struggling to find people with the right experience on a permanent basis.”
Chris Bernard, head of operations at Albemarle Interim Management, added: “There is an increasing shortage of permanent technical professionals in food manufacturing. In some ways it is catch-22; if good competitive permanent salaries are not paid, the industry will never be able to attract the right talent or keep it. But with margins under pressure from the retailers, food manufacturers cannot always afford to pay salaries commensurate with other sectors.
“Interim management can be lucrative for technical professionals, plus they also have the opportunity to go into new environments to add value very quickly through their high level of expertise and experience.”