Straining to be heard01 April 2006

Talk 'training and education' to the leading lights in many businesses and there's a strong probability their eyes will glaze over. It's not a subject that's dear to everyone's heart. It doesn't set the pound signs rolling in the financial director's eyes. It fails to halt board members in their tracks as they plough through the latest forecasts or debate tough new measures to boost financial growth - or ward off its decline.

Tracey Shelley, chief executive of the Society of Operations Engineers (SOE), is all too aware of the difficult trading position so many companies are faced with - survival is the daily reality many of them are dealing with - and recognises why training and education of their people tend to suffer. But to recognise their dilemma is not to agree with this neglect. In blunt terms, she believes any business that fails to invest continually in its staff is heading for a fall.

"By and large, the bigger organisations do invest in their people, because they have the resources to do so," says Shelley. "However, the same isn't true for the SMEs [small to medium enterprises]. They often struggle just to survive. Justifying spending on education and training is not an easy thing for them. And yet improving the skills and capabilities of their people in this way inevitably becomes a measure of their own success."

According to Shelley, organisations that are under pressure - particularly SMEs - need to be able to stand back and look at their requirements as a whole. Poorly trained staff cannot contribute properly to the overall health of the business and, all too often, end up disillusioned and demotivated. Most importantly, she appreciates the SOE's member organisations need a support structure that enables them to deliver against their employees' individual expectations and needs - and that the SOE has a major role and responsibility in delivering this.

"Speaking from experience, very few people get the opportunity to undergo formal education and this is particularly so in the current climate where, for many, it is becoming so expensive and prohibitive," she points out. "Therefore the less formal route of training and professional development does come into play. It's an area where people really can take control over their career development."

The SOE has become increasingly proactive in bridging that gap of late. "The sort of provision that we look to make available is very informal, but allows individuals to engage of their own freewill without necessarily having the backing from employers, although their involvement is great, if it's structured in the right way. As a professional body, one of the major changes we've made that distinguishes us from many of the other institutions is that we've become incredibly people focused. All of our members are seen absolutely as individuals, with their own particular needs, and we have to address those needs.

"We've made a huge shift in our approach to become far more customer focused now than the organisation has ever been," Shelley adds. "By looking at each person's unique requirements, we've moved away from having a specified CPD [Continuing Professional Development] requirement where, for example, a certain number of hours of CPD must be completed each year, or where so many points have to be collected. Many of the other institutions still operate in this way, but we don't.

"Often, with that kind of approach, people may attend an event or training course purely to pick up points or hours, whether the course was relevant or not. What we are encouraging people to do is ask themselves where their careers are heading and what it is that's important to them. For some of our members, still quite early in their careers, CPD may mean seeking our help in identifying how to build up their skills and achieve specific technical knowledge. This we may do by recommending college/university courses, or providing SOE seminars and technical events, as well as through Plant Engineer magazine, our newsletter or the website. Other members may require access to the 'softer' skills, such as when taking on a new managerial role. They may need to learn how to people-manage, conduct appraisals or handle financial matters. These are all areas where the SOE can get deeply involved.

"In the past, engineering institutions would never have recognised those elements as being CPD. Their view would have been, 'it's not technical, it's not engineering and so it's not relevant'. What we say at the SOE is that, if you look at the person as a whole, it's entirely relevant, because it's part of their personal and career development - and so we want to help them to obtain that knowledge."

As part of that process, the SOE vets much of the education and training provision available - courses run in colleges and universities relating to plant engineering, engineering surveying and transport engineering, for example. They then ask the education establishments involved if they would like the SOE to review that programme and map it against the society's own standards. "But we can also map these courses against the Engineering Council standards," states Shelley, "which means that every individual who goes through that programme of study is guaranteed it will meet the academic components of SOE membership and EC (UK) registration."

However, the SOE's involvement goes further than that. "Overall, we support members in achieving three key components in their development: academic (qualifications), training (on-the-job learning) and experience (the knowledge gained over time). If we can help to make that route easier for people by vetting courses and training programmes, then that has a positive effect on our members and the opportunities for self-development."

Shelley speaks not only as CEO of the society - the first woman to hold that position - but also as someone who at every stage of her own career has progressed her education through part-time study (see panel, previous page). A registered Incorporated engineer herself, she has been CEO since February 2002, having previously been deputy chief executive at the Institute of Energy for almost five years.
It's a huge success story, but veils the struggle that lies behind it. At secondary school, Shelley, academically bright and ambitious, was seen by her teachers as all set for university and a glittering career in law or medicine - "one suitable for a lady", she smiles wryly. However, she was to disappoint them, as she had already set her heart on engineering - from the age of twelve.

Shelley was faced with every barrier any young woman could possibly have encountered as she pursued her dream. At upper school, she was refused permission to do woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. "Girls don't do that", she was told. However, her very supportive parents fought for her inclusion in the technical drawing classes and succeeded.

When she turned 16, and wanted to undertake an apprenticeship to pursue a career in mechanical engineering, she had little problem passing the entrance exams. It was the final selection stage that proved her downfall. Again, she was considered to be the wrong gender. The door was shut. But her determination opened other doors and she was accepted for a mechanical engineering apprenticeship with GEC Avionics [now BAE Systems], studying day release to achieve both BTEC National and Higher National Certificates in Mechanical Engineering. Apprenticeship over, she became a development engineer as a member of a mechanical/optical night vision equipment project team before joining the mechanical design department, with responsibilities for structural and thermal analyses, and environmental qualification testing of military and civil head-up display equipment - the transparent display screen in front of a pilot, on to which all the technical data relating to the aircraft and its flight is projected.

After almost eight years as a practising engineer, Shelley took a lecturing post within the technology department at Mid Kent College of Higher and Further Education where she taught a range of engineering subjects at national and higher national levels for five years. She discovered she had a real affinity with the students and a passion to help them learn and develop as individuals. However, while teaching, she also witnessed the devastating effects under-investment in further education could have.

"It was a career in which I was totally immersed, but I started to feel that the further education system was being squeezed. Most of the attention was being given to higher education and the universities, as well as the schools, while the FE colleges were being mostly forgotten. Engineering, in particular, started to suffer, because it's quite an expensive subject to teach and demands a lot of space, whereas leisure and tourism studies, for example, are relatively cheap."

Shelley felt her passion for the job was being stifled and could no longer carry on, prompting her move into the professional body world. But her belief in personal education, training and development is something that informs the way in which the SOE now operates. There is also a strong focus on trying to influence the employers.

"We are working with them to show that subscribing to education and training doesn't have to mean time-out from the business for their people when it's carried out in a less formal way through membership of a professional body like SOE. In fact, those employees have access to valuable technical information and networks of like-minded people, which also benefits the employer."

Shelley points to engineering surveying as one area where it's vital members keep up to date with technology and development. "Their role often demands they inspect an accident situation or insurance risk. While they are generally very aware of how their role may change, the very nature of the work they do means they are often home-based. So there's a real benefit in being able to come together with other engineering surveyors as a means of reinforcing that knowledge and experience."

On the plant engineering side, Shelley points to the huge diversity of roles in what used to be a well-defined area of work. "Once, if you'd looked at university and college courses on offer, you would have seen many for plant engineering. Most don't come under that heading any more. Many establishments are now using terms such as 'operations engineering'.

"Equally, people who found themselves in a plant engineering type role would mostly have started out as a mechanical or electrical engineer and been through a fairly pure form of engineering before moving across to plant engineering later in their careers. Also, PEs tend to be spread across every industry and often work in isolation, where plant engineering is just one aspect of their employers' business, so once again keeping abreast of the technology is quite a challenge."

As Shelley points out, such challenges all serve to emphasise the role the SOE needs to play in ensuring its members do not become isolated from on-going education and training, by dint of the strenuous demands their jobs impose on them.

"We have a real mix of members on the PE side, many approaching the end of their working lives," she points out. "So one of the key areas on which we are focused at the SOE is to attract more younger people involved in a PE role, but who wouldn't necessarily recognise that as such. By identifying and reaching them, we can let them know we are here to help and offer them support. That's something we want all of our membership to recognise and hopefully respond to, for our own future is very much about our members and their professional well-being."

SOE

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