SKILLS OCTOBER 2019
RAISING
THE BAR
BAE Systems’ latest skills whitepaper
highlights how employers must help
ready workers for the changes the
future of manufacturing will bring
BY AMY BEST
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is set to
change people’s working lives beyond
all recognition. As disruptive innovation
and new technologies create radically
different ways of thinking and working,
the impact – and potential gains –
could be enormous, claims a new BAE Systems
whitepaper, entitled Future Skills for
Our UK Business (https://bit.ly/2RTh2Ax).
Most employers, however, have yet to
either take advantage of these possibilities or
understand their consequences. The UK has a
persistent problem with low productivity, and
opportunity does not flow equally to everyone.
At the bottom are a large number of people
who either never progressed beyond GCSEs or
have gained only low-level qualifications. Too
often they end up in low-skilled, low wage jobs.
Indeed, the UK has a growing proportion of
low-skilled jobs. The Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) Survey
of Adult Skills shows that the UK is second from
the top (only behind Spain) in terms of jobs that
require lower-level qualifications.
The OECD highlights the need for new
systems in the UK to validate skills and ‘on the
job’ and informal learning at work or beyond
traditional education – as utilised to great success
in the Netherlands and elsewhere.
The whitepaper says that work-based learning
must be flexible, digitally-enabled and connected
to developments in the workplace. It says: “The
UK needs an implementation approach to its
industrial strategy in which more businesses work
together with other partners to support
lifelong investment in skills. We believe
both employers and government need
to play a key role here.”
The necessary skills
The jobs of the future may have
names we don’t recognise today.
Although nobody can predict
exactly how technologies will
change our society and working
environment, the whitepaper
says that BAE is certain that
the ability to analyse and use
data will be fundamental in its
business. “In the next 20 years,
technology will significantly
change how the armed forces
operate. We will need increasing
numbers of people who can
work with our armed forces to
understand how equipment,
platforms and systems can work
together across air, land, sea and
cyber and how they will be used
in interconnected ways on the
battlefield.”
“We need to be clear what
we mean by digital skills,” says
Kevin McLeod, chief engineer
at BAE Systems Maritime. “This
is about how to use big data,
the Internet of Things and in
our case the military internet of
things, to improve what – and
how – we deliver to the UK’s
armed forces. An ability to
constantly think in a networked
way is critical.”
The unprecedented
impact of the internet and
mobile communications
has fundamentally altered
traditional R&D in the
defence sector. Now,
defence-orientated
technologies produced
by organisations such as
BAE Systems benefit as
much from disruptive
innovations in the commercial
world as from those from
in-house and university
research. This approach to
‘open innovation’ has wider
implications for skills as
organisations source ideas and
resources from a wider base.
Dr Julia Sutcliffe, chief
technologist at BAE Systems
Air, explains: “There’s never
been a better time to work in
this field. Our industrial base,
our fantastic universities and
our education system can feed
this dynamic, but we need to do
things differently and seek out
creativity and innovation from
unusual places through new
and agile partnerships across a
much wider ecosystem.”
Working with the
workforce
The majority of those forming
the workforce for the next
decade are already in work,
says the whitepaper. The OECD
states that 32% of jobs are set
to change radically as a result
of automation in the next 15
to 20 years. Yet, a third of UK
businesses do not offer any
work-based training.
Smaller companies don’t
necessarily have the time or
resources to embrace changing
technology or to update
manufacturing processes. Of the
more than 687,000 engineering
companies in the UK, most have
fewer than 10 employees.
BAE Systems’
whitepaper
explores the
future of skills
22 www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk
/2RTh2Ax)
/www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk