Being a good employer starts with being passionate about the built environment and enabling those in your workforce to achieve their potential.
Yet today’s built environment is evolving at such a pace that many individuals, educational organisations and businesses are struggling to support their teams with the relevant skills to keep up with its evolution.
This was just one of the messages RLB’s People and Culture Director for the UK and Europe, Sarah Draper, communicated to a filled room at Building’s Good Employer Guide Live event last week in London.
Acknowledging that the scale of the skills shortage and skills gap in the industry right now feels unprecedented, she outlined how we all need to work together to attract, train, develop and retain the right skills. But to do this we need to match the speed at which we need these skills with training and upskilling and ensuring that we are not closing off pathways to entry.
Sarah talked to the packed room about the huge opportunity the built environment has to attract talent to our industry. Citing green skills as a way of making the sector appealing as a career of choice, she outlined how the green economy was four times larger than the UK manufacturing sector and how a recent LinkedIn’s Green Skill report stated that green employment opportunities sat at 46.6% above the economy-wide hiring rate.
Read here how RLB helped Midlands Local Authorities roll out green skills in innovative pilot scheme.
It is also clear that our industry will be a human first industry powered by digital skills. Sarah shared how at RLB there had been equal emphasis on the development of green and digital skills, increasing investment in apprenticeships and widening the routes and educational partnerships. RLB’s Sustainability and ESG team had expanded, as had RLB’s corporate business tracking of its own green credentials. There had also been an upskilling of the existing workforce through RLB’s Multiverse Digital Academy.
There was a recognition that clients now have different requirements and need different skillsets. RLB had responded to this demand with the launch of sister company, RLB Digital, that provide clients with digital tools in built environment including BIM, digital twins and information and data management and AI strategy.
Sarah concluded the Good Employer Live panel session by explaining how companies are struggling with the disparity of digital and green skills within their workforces. And there is a need for everyone to have a level of new skills knowledge – so cost managers need to understand the cost impact of climate change and be able to use digital tools.
Sarah’s final words perfectly summed up the sentiments of the Good Employer Guide panel:
“The time is now for action, the challenge is so big, we need to work together as organisations and industry bodies to build a better tomorrow.”
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