The con­struc­tion indus­try needs more young work­ers – and fast. To meet the chal­lenge, it not only must pro­mote itself more effec­tive­ly, but also change its image.  

The sec­tor is key to sup­port­ing key UK aspi­ra­tions for the com­ing years, like build­ing new hous­ing and mov­ing to net zero by 2050. How­ev­er, it faces long­stand­ing recruit­ment chal­lenges.  

The gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor are propos­ing high lev­els of infra­struc­ture invest­ment, which are like­ly to result in out­put grow­ing at an aver­age rate of 4.4% between 2021 and 2025. To ser­vice such growth, the con­struc­tion sec­tor will need to hire an extra 43,000 work­ers per year. That’s on top of the usu­al fig­ure need­ed to main­tain the sta­tus quo, tak­ing the total size of the work­force to 2.84 mil­lion, accord­ing to the Con­struc­tion Skills Net­work 2021 report from the Con­struc­tion Indus­try Train­ing Board (CITB). 

How­ev­er, this ambi­tious tar­get comes at a time of wors­en­ing skills short­ages and intense com­pe­ti­tion across all areas of the econ­o­my, a sit­u­a­tion that is caus­ing wage infla­tion, among oth­er chal­lenges. 

To make mat­ters worse, the num­ber of work­ers lost to the indus­try due both to Brex­it and the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic was very sig­nif­i­cant, says Mar­cus Ben­nett, the CITB’s head of indus­try analy­sis and fore­cast­ing. He fears the true gap in sup­ply could now be even larg­er than indi­cat­ed by last year’s report.

For exam­ple, as many as 25,000 migrant work­ers have returned home over the last cou­ple of years at the same time as the tra­di­tion­al tal­ent pool of young skilled work­ers from the EU is dwin­dling, mean­ing the depart­ing work­ers aren’t being replaced.

Domestic shortfall

The indus­try has lost domes­tic work­ers, too. “Los­ing skilled Euro­pean work­ers has had an impact, but con­struc­tion also has a lot of self-employed and sole traders and dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the fur­lough scheme didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­tect their incomes,” says Rosie Gloster, prin­ci­pal research fel­low at the Insti­tute for Employ­ment Stud­ies.  

There are sto­ries of work­ers migrat­ing to oth­er sec­tors, includ­ed lor­ry dri­ving, where demand for skills is high. Ear­ly retire­ment is anoth­er route out. 

All of this means that while demand for con­struc­tion skills is greater than ever, 223,000 work­ers have quit the sec­tor since the sum­mer of 2019, accord­ing to research by the Con­struc­tion Prod­ucts Asso­ci­a­tion.

There’s a big divide between what hap­pens on the inside and the per­cep­tions of those on the out­side

To make mat­ters worse, near­ly half of such leavers were expe­ri­enced per­son­nel in the industry’s core 45–55 age brack­et, which accounts for a huge 35% of the total work­force. That’s accord­ing to a blog post by Oscar Watkins, head of research for the Insti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Research (IPPR) think tank. By way of con­trast, a mere 20% are aged below 30.

Even more wor­ry­ing­ly, the IPPR’s Feb­ru­ary 2021 Skills for a Green Recov­ery report indi­cat­ed that over the next 15 years, up to 750,000 UK con­struc­tion work­ers are expect­ed to either retire or will be about to retire, a sit­u­a­tion that it believes “threat­ens to under­mine the government’s plans”.

Even new­er and poten­tial­ly ‘sex­i­er’ areas like renew­able ener­gy – where a pos­i­tive social pur­pose might be expect­ed to appeal to younger peo­ple – are not immune. Here, under-30s account for a mere 13% of the total labour pool, accord­ing to the Engi­neer­ing Con­struc­tion Indus­try (ECI) Train­ing Board’s Work­force Cen­sus 2021, with the fig­ure ris­ing to only 15% across the wider indus­try.

Unravelling complexity

Suzan­nah Nichol is chief exec­u­tive of indus­try body Build UK. She thinks a key chal­lenge is the sector’s broad range of activ­i­ties and frag­ment­ed nature, which means “it’s not easy to present a coher­ent nar­ra­tive” to poten­tial new entrants. 

A huge 97% of the indus­try is made up of micro-com­pa­nies employ­ing 10 peo­ple or few­er, with about 40% of all work­ers being self-employed. Even the 50 or so large employ­ers tend to oper­ate “behind hoard­ings”, which results in the sec­tor hav­ing a “low pro­file”, Nichol says.

Anoth­er prob­lem is the wide array of roles and occu­pa­tions. This includes trades­peo­ple like elec­tri­cians and plumbers, as well as pro­fes­sion­als, such as engi­neers and quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ors. There are also sup­port func­tions, such as HR and mar­ket­ing. Each has its own entry route.

“The biggest chal­lenge in con­struc­tion is the entry route as there’s no obvi­ous career path and it’s cur­rent­ly com­plex and con­fus­ing,” Nichol says. “It’s not very clear what the right qual­i­fi­ca­tions are and it’s dif­fi­cult for young peo­ple and their par­ents and teach­ers to find the right infor­ma­tion, so they’re often not aware of the oppor­tu­ni­ties and go else­where.”

The biggest chal­lenge in con­struc­tion is the entry route as there’s no obvi­ous career path

Oth­er bar­ri­ers include the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by young peo­ple in obtain­ing part-time or Sat­ur­day jobs, which are con­sid­ered use­ful to help them test the waters to see if con­struc­tion is for them. But even if such tasters are avail­able, young peo­ple tend to be put off by a demand for basic qual­i­fi­ca­tions in areas like health and safe­ty.

This sit­u­a­tion isn’t helped by a com­mon prac­tice among small employ­ers of recruit­ing via word of mouth using their own net­works of fam­i­ly and friends, nar­row­ing the poten­tial tal­ent pool in the process.

The result of all this is that con­struc­tion remains “very white and male-ori­ent­ed” and is “seen as old school and non-diverse”, says Nivene Pow­ell, head of com­mu­ni­ties at house­build­ing firm Eco World Lon­don. 

The Rethink­ing Recruit­ment report from CITB reveals that women make up only 14% of the total work­force, a fig­ure that falls to just 3% in front­line, site-based roles. Mem­bers of eth­nic minori­ties also account for a mere 6% despite com­pris­ing 14% of the wider work­ing-age pop­u­la­tion. It’s per­haps unsur­pris­ing that just 30% of research respon­dents felt that con­struc­tion was for peo­ple like them. 

“I don’t think it’s mar­ket­ed in an attrac­tive way,” Pow­ell says. “In terms of recruit­ment and rais­ing the pro­file of the indus­try, you don’t see any­thing in local shops or on the Tube or in places where diverse groups vis­it.” 

For women, bar­ri­ers to entry include not only the male-dom­i­nat­ed nature of the indus­try, but also expec­ta­tions of hav­ing to move from site to site and a lack of flex­i­ble work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. That’s par­tic­u­lar­ly off-putting for those with car­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties. 

“The con­struc­tion sec­tor has an image prob­lem, with many peo­ple feel­ing it’s quite a lad­dish cul­ture,” says Gloster. “Inter­est­ing­ly though, when we spoke to women and oth­er minor­i­ty groups, that wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly their per­cep­tion of work­ing there, so there’s a big divide between what hap­pens on the inside and the per­cep­tions of those on the out­side, which needs to be addressed.”

Need for upskilling 

Inter­nal skills devel­op­ment is anoth­er chal­lenge, with a big divide between the industry’s require­ments and the real­i­ty on the ground. 

Although it has had recruit­ment dif­fi­cul­ties and under­ly­ing skills short­ages for the last 10–15 years, it has done too lit­tle to address them. “The UK relied on Euro­pean labour as a stick­ing plas­ter and hasn’t focused enough on train­ing peo­ple already in the coun­try,” Gloster says. “So there’s a need for long-term work on build­ing skills and capa­bil­i­ties to meet the country’s infra­struc­ture require­ments.”

To this end, the CITB is work­ing with the sec­tor to intro­duce a range of ini­tia­tives. For exam­ple, funds from its mem­ber­ship levy have been used to finance the ‘Go Con­struct’ por­tal. This helps any­one con­sid­er­ing a career in con­struc­tion to explore pos­si­ble jobs and careers and learn how to get into them.  

It has also sup­port­ed the devel­op­ment of the Tal­entview Con­struc­tion web­site, which aims to match indus­try entrants to employ­ers offer­ing a first job, appren­tice­ship or work expe­ri­ence. Anoth­er ini­tia­tive is the Go Con­struct STEM Ambas­sador scheme, which encour­ages par­tic­i­pants to pro­mote the indus­try and talk about their own expe­ri­ences to learn­ers in schools and col­leges.

“The aim is to pro­vide prac­ti­cal sup­port,” says Ben­nett. “There are a lot of things going on indi­vid­u­al­ly that make a bit of a dif­fer­ence, but col­lec­tive­ly they have the poten­tial to make a big dif­fer­ence.”

Doing more, quicker

How­ev­er, to tack­le the industry’s chal­lenges effec­tive­ly, Ben­nett believes it won’t be enough to sim­ply find new peo­ple to under­take tra­di­tion­al skills, such as brick­lay­ing. 

Instead, it will be vital to upskill exist­ing work­ers and bring in new types of exper­tise, rang­ing from dig­i­tal and envi­ron­men­tal knowl­edge to lead­er­ship and man­age­ment skills. The aim is to boost both qual­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and make the most of the skills and expe­ri­ence of the peo­ple already in the sec­tor. 

“Every occu­pa­tion­al group in con­struc­tion requires more peo­ple with a greater diver­si­ty of skills and abil­i­ties,” Ben­nett explains. “In terms of achiev­ing net zero, for instance, we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need more peo­ple, we just need them to do things slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly.”

There is strong aware­ness of what needs to be done and pos­i­tive lead­er­ship from organ­i­sa­tions like the Con­struc­tion Lead­er­ship Coun­cil. How­ev­er, if the indus­try is to real­ly be able to hit envi­ron­men­tal and oth­er tar­gets, “we will need to do more, and do it quick­er”, says Ben­nett. 

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How the industry is tackling its skills problem

The skills short­age is already hav­ing an impact on some com­pa­nies’ abil­i­ty to take on work, says Nichol. In some instances, they’re actu­al­ly hav­ing to turn projects down, ask employ­ees to do more over­time or rejig their pro­grammes to access agency staff at times when they’re avail­able. 

Some of the larg­er play­ers, such as Laing O’Rourke and Ilke Homes, have set up fac­to­ries to man­u­fac­ture many of the com­po­nents of their projects off-site. This sce­nario appeals to a wider demo­graph­ic, includ­ing women. Activ­i­ties are more appeal­ing for many as they take place inside, and unlike a tra­di­tion­al con­struc­tion site, the loca­tion and hours are fixed, which makes flex­i­ble work­ing eas­i­er. The auto­mat­ed nature of these facil­i­ties also means that few­er staff are required, which is valu­able at a time of wide­spread skills short­ages. 

These big­ger com­pa­nies are like­wise increas­ing­ly going down the digi­ti­sa­tion route on-site too, which includes intro­duc­ing tools to enable the remote oper­a­tion of plant equip­ment.  

Oth­er employ­ers, mean­while, have adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of tak­ing on and devel­op­ing young tal­ent and exist­ing staff inter­nal­ly. Civic Engi­neers is a civ­il, struc­tur­al and trans­port engi­neer­ing prac­tice. It has a grad­u­ate entry scheme and offers degree and HNC-lev­el appren­tice­ships, as well as pro­vid­ing work expe­ri­ence to paid interns study­ing for engi­neer­ing degrees. The aim is to devel­op an ongo­ing tal­ent pipeline.

To upskill its [wider] exist­ing work­force, the com­pa­ny has set up a Civic Acad­e­my. This offers “bite-sized learn­ing” each fort­night in key areas like car­bon-neu­tral design and green infra­struc­ture, says Car­o­line Todd, its head of peo­ple and cul­ture.

“We’re not going to solve the cli­mate cri­sis by con­tin­u­ing to do the same thing, so we’ve got to devel­op a much wider skill set and ensure our work­force reflects the diverse soci­ety we live in,” she says.

Encouraging diversity

With this in mind, the com­pa­ny has been work­ing to shift its gen­der bal­ance over the last five years from an 80:20 to a 60:40 male-female split. It has tar­get­ed female engi­neers, includ­ing return­ers, with focused recruit­ment activ­i­ties, show­cas­ing their sto­ries and tak­ing action to “cre­ate a cul­ture that’s inclu­sive and attrac­tive to every­one”.

EcoWorld Lon­don has also worked to increase its pool of diverse tal­ent. Togeth­er with Houn­slow Coun­cil and local train­ing provider MIT Skills, it has set up a free-of-charge pre-employ­ment train­ing pro­gramme to equip local, unem­ployed peo­ple with the basic skills and trade cer­ti­fi­ca­tions required to work on a con­struc­tion site. Par­tic­i­pants also spend two weeks of the four-week course gain­ing work expe­ri­ence at an EcoWorld Lon­don site. 

About 60 peo­ple have com­plet­ed the scheme so far, with 29 going on to secure employ­ment and sev­en enter­ing long-term appren­tice­ships. The company’s goal is to expand the ini­tia­tive to oth­er sites. Over time, it will require con­trac­tors and sub­con­trac­tors to sign up to pro­vide suit­able appren­tice­ship places or jobs as part of the ini­tial ten­der process.

“We’ll also be look­ing at work­ing with spe­cif­ic organ­i­sa­tions, such as Women in Con­struc­tion and Dis­abil­i­ty Rights, to help bring more diverse groups into the sec­tor,” says Pow­ell. “We’ll dis­cuss with them how to make it more attrac­tive and address skills gaps across the indus­try, because we can’t do it alone. There has to be a part­ner­ship across the pri­vate, pub­lic and vol­un­tary sec­tors if we’re going to solve this prob­lem.”

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