Employers turning to new pathways to tempt women and school leavers to join them

The Irish construction sector is crying out for people to fill vacancies in engineering, quantity surveying, health and safety and project management. The missing link is applicants and the construction industry is not alone. Just about every sector is facing some sort of skills shortage.

What is keeping managers and HR professionals awake at night is how to fill these vacancies and targeting niche groups is one way employers are tackling the problem. Older workers and those on the autistic spectrum are two of the talent pools being tapped, while non-traditional apprenticeships and returnships designed to encourage women back into paid employment are others.

In an effort to address the urgent skills shortage in its sector the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) has become the latest organisation to focus on attracting returnees. It is running a 12-week programme, starting in October, that aims to give women the confidence and updated skills to rejoin the industry. The course is free, predominantly online and part-time. The classroom input lasts for six weeks, followed by a six-week work placement.

Twenty places are available, open to those not currently in employment who have previous experience of the construction sector. However, there may be wiggle room on eligibility if someone has a relevant background from another sector or strong administrative or IT experience.

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What often deters women from returning to work is the assumption that things have moved on too far in their absence for them to catch up. They can also be dubious about their ability to pick up the threads of their career successfully.

But all the evidence from returnship programmes run by the tech and financial services sectors in recent years tells a different story. Most returnees get up to speed very quickly on the technical side of things, while a combination of personal coaching and workshops on interview skills, IT training and CV preparation help them deal with the practicalities.

“Our target group is likely to be those in their mid-30s to their mid-50s and they may be a few years out of the workforce or maybe even 20 years,” says Liz Carroll, network manager for the construction professionals skillnet at the CIF.

“We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to participate, so the day runs from 9.30am until 12.30pm and it’s not every day. Depending on where the applicants come from, we will see if it’s feasible for people to meet face to face initially to get to know each other or if it will all be remote,” says Carroll, who adds that there has been no shortage of employers stepping up with job placement offers, including big names such as Sisk and Mercury.

Job placements are a good way for both sides to see if the cap fits. So too are apprenticeships. Having waned in popularity here as a route to employment, apprenticeships are making a major comeback with education training boards around the State collaborating with employers to develop apprenticeships in non-traditional areas such as cybersecurity, network engineering, sales and financial services.

There are now almost 70 active apprenticeship programmes available, covering most sectors, with another 20 in development in areas such as agriculture, logistics, biopharma, horticulture and hospitality. At Bord na Móna, for example, there are currently 29 apprenticeships open in areas including mechanics, wind turbine maintenance, transport operations and automation.

Even large corporates with their constant appetite for new recruits have recognised that apprenticeships can net them a different pool of potential talent. These are typically people who do not have or may not want a third-level qualification but are perfectly competent individuals capable of slotting into an organisation with suitable training.

Accenture, which has hired 200,000 people worldwide in the last 18 months, started its apprenticeship programme with seven people in 2016. Since then more than 1,200 have participated and most of them were subsequently hired. At this point, roughly 20 per cent of Accenture entry-level hires in North America do not have degrees, which is also a healthy tick for the diversity and inclusion box.

“These are individuals who would not have been on a path to get a job at Accenture using our old way of hiring … We had to think out of the box and really look at skills and potential and then be willing to train ourselves,” says chief executive Julie Sweet, who adds that employers need to hire for learning ability and agility, not just certain skills as 50 per cent of the skills deemed relevant in 2017 (by Fortune 500) are not relevant now.

Another large employer offering training to equip people for roles in the digital economy is Microsoft, which has developed its cloud traineeship programme in conjunction with Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim Education and Training Board. The programme was launched at the end of 2021 and provides individuals with the skills required to apply for jobs in the fast-growing cloud technologies sector.

The traineeship is fully funded and open to anyone looking to start a new career in cloud technology or IT. It is also suitable for those with some previous experience who want to retrain in this evolving area. The course, which involves 1,200 training hours over 52 weeks, is part of Microsoft’s Pathways for Life learning programme, which is designed to give people at different stages in their careers the skills to fully participate in the digital economy.