Feb/March 2020

Skills & Recruitment
ATTRACTING NEW TALENT
With recruitment a growing concern for many fabricators, Stephanie Tague, head of Building
Our Skills, talks to Total Fabricator about the campaign to make fenestration a career of choice.
In a nutshell, what is Building Our Skills?
Building Our Skills (BOS) – ‘Making Fenestration
a Career of Choice’ – is committed to bridging
the growing skills gap by working closely with
employers and other organisations to attract new
entrants to the industry, and by upskilling the
existing workforce to ensure it can meet future
challenges and continue to prosper.
BOS aims to work on behalf of the industry to
continuously promote and raise awareness of
fenestration to new and young people, helping to
inform, encourage, inspire and support them.
What fenestration skillsets does it cover?
Any business with a stakeholding in the
fenestration industry can take part. For BOS to
succeed, we need companies and individuals to
support the campaign, hopefully buying into its
principles and goals.
BOS wants to see all roles in the industry
accessible to new and young people.
“Mentoring, incentives
and rewards for
achieving personal
targets can all help
to attract and retain
young people”
What can BOS offer fabricators specifically?
Many of our larger partners, mainly extrusion and
component manufacturers, are working with us to
create ways of getting fabricators and installers
to engage with the campaign. This is manifesting
itself in the promotion of several initiatives to help
fabricators focus on upskilling their workforce, and
also highlight where funding support is available.
We also have a campaign which aims to get
business and individuals engaged with
local schools. In turn, this will help
create awareness towards the industry
and future recruitment in those areas.
We are also running workshops and
masterclasses to support the changing
legislations, improvements and other
important factors which may affect
fabricators.
What do you think puts off
newcomers and youngsters
joining the industry?
We have been slow to recognise
that our industry has some fantastic
opportunities. We haven’t promoted
fenestration as a career of choice and
therefore, it’s not perceived as such.
Young people will have a huge
impact on futureproofing and growing
fenestration, so it is important we
make every effort to attract them,
even more so as most businesses
across our sector are already experiencing the
effects of an ageing workforce.
How can fabricators attract new talent?
A fabricator role may not be the most attractive
proposition for a young person, so it’s important
to consider what motivates them: apprenticeship
schemes, qualifications, mentoring, incentives
and rewards for achieving personal targets can
all help to attract and retain young people.
BOS is working on a number of initiatives and
creating advisory groups to better understand
how we can communicate our messages into
certain sectors more effectively, notably the
education system, which is top of our list. We
want to encourage anyone with experience and
opinions to join in the discussions and input into
the campaign.
Can you tell us about the EverybodyFITs
campaign?
EverybodyFITs was launched in January this year
to encourage industry employers to consider the
benefits of employing a diverse workforce to help
bridge the growing skills gap.
We launched EverybodyFITs to get employers to
consider a wider pool of employees, rather than
the standard stereotypical person who would
normally fill a certain role.
Stephanie Tague.
For example, we believe it’s important to
highlight job roles such as surveying and
CAD design to females, and explore how we
can attract people with disabilities to join our
workforces. Diversity in a workforce can be key to a
company’s success and there is a vast amount of
government research to prove how this can work.
Contined on page 60...
58 T F FEB/MAR 2020 CONNECTING THE WINDOW, DOOR & ROOF FABRICATION SUPPLY CHAIN