SPOTLIGHTING PURPOSE AND PROGRESSION Activating talent
How can businesses, industry and the government rewrite the narrative on food and drinks manufacturing so talent realises the incredible innovations and new thinking taking place? “Food industry issues are just as interesting as those in automotive and aviation,” believes Dario Riccomini from Aldomak. But does talent know how interesting and multifaceted a career in the industry can be? Feedback from graduates suggests that food and drinks manufacturing rarely or never features in engineering courses. There is an opportunity for companies to feed their biggest issues into local universities and further education colleges to build food-specific content into science and engineering courses, to offer work experience and industry placements and to partner on hands-on research. Amanda Johnston, Co-Director of the Advanced Food Innovation Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, believes food engineering isn't understood as an academic discipline in the UK nearly as well as it is in other parts of Europe, the Republic of Ireland, and the United States. Added to that, it fails to attract talent because the food manufacturing industry gets such negative press. Promoting purpose Organisations in the research programme who were confident in their recruitment and retention strategies believe their success is due to their clear, compelling direction and strong purpose. Jason Rommer, partner at recruitment consultants, Wilton & Bain, agrees: “Attraction is helped by the scale and scope of work – is it truly transformative? Food and drink is hugely important and interesting to people outside their careers so why aren’t we all tapping into that potential?”
Food and drink manufacturing challenges and opportunities rival any industry, and with a purpose to feed the nation and help tackle strategic challenges such as climate change and health, it offers incredible careers for modern and diverse talent. But the industry could highlight its value more, as well as ensure the sector’s challenges are embedded into education and training, producing technical, motivated, empowered talent at all levels. There is still more work to be done by manufacturers to showcase the fantastic career opportunities for young people with a wide range of skills – working closely with government and education providers. A recent industry- led campaign to attract new talent into the food industry, Mmmake Your Mark, is a positive example of what the food and drink industry can do to showcase what it has to offer. It could be built on further to attract highly technical and advanced manufacturing skills. Collaboration with technology companies can inspire talent into food and drink manufacturing. One of the food and drink manufacturers we spoke to, for instance, works closely with global technology product providers that will second their AI and data analysts to help grow their domain skills. Some of these people are fascinated by the purpose of the industry and stay on in the food and drink industry. Some of them return to the tech space, leaving with better expertise and helping create products that work better for the industry.
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