{"id":7466,"date":"2008-11-13T19:02:56","date_gmt":"2008-11-14T01:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/13\/generating-fresh-interest-in-the-construction-trade\/"},"modified":"2008-11-13T19:02:56","modified_gmt":"2008-11-14T01:02:56","slug":"generating-fresh-interest-in-the-construction-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/?p=7466","title":{"rendered":"Generating Fresh Interest in the Construction Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Tal Potishman<\/div>\n

With green blankets covering the buildings and cranes looming darkly overhead, Britain’s commercial building boom doesn’t seem to be much affected by the economic slump. As other industries cut back, the commercial building industry is not doing so, which is resulting in a noticeable shortage of workers to meet the demands of British construction companies. <\/p>\n

The shortage of skilled construction workers becomes increasingly evident when looking at last year’s figures. In 2007, 13,000 building projects were started, and around 87,600 workers are needed to support these projects. The skill deficiency is widespread, extending to both the trade and non-trade. In the common trades, the biggest annual requirements are in wood and electrical trade, as well as brick layers and building specialists. In non-trades, all from construction managers, business processes managers, office-based IT recruits, to architects, professional and technical staff are on high demand.<\/p>\n

These deficiencies are largely due to three reasons: 1) the impact of the building boom, 2) the decrease in the number of East Europeans in the trade; 3) recruiters’ misconceptions of what construction work entails. <\/p>\n

The first reason is quite self-evident and has already been discussed previously – the higher the project demands are, the more individuals need to be hired to do the jobs. <\/p>\n

As many of the highly-skilled workers in the British trade were often of Polish origin, the impact of the construction boom in Poland is keeping a lot of Poles at home, which is a massive loss for British construction companies.<\/p>\n

The third reason that the UK is experiencing a worker shortage is due to recruiters’ misconceptions of what construction work actually entails. Many job hunters perceive builders as hard-hats limited to a construction site, while in reality, a lot of construction jobs are often managerial or office-based.<\/p>\n

Numerous steps have been taken to compensate for the lack of recruits in the trade. One approach adopted by companies is to break the predominantly white and male-dominated construction trend by trying to recruit women<\/a> and individuals from various ethnic groups as well. The National Association of Women in Construction is an example of a company that widens the recruiting net, in order to target groups with a larger range of skills and work ethics. This also creates a more diverse work place, and allows for fresh ideas to be introduced into the industry. <\/p>\n

A way of increasing the number of graduates in the construction trade is by getting children interested at a young age, as the Sustainable Employment Legacy Forum and Inspire Scholarships programs have done. They not only organise trips for children to visit construction sites, but they also offer student funds, apprenticeships, and training courses to people in the poorer outskirts of London, providing younger generations with great initiatives to join the industry.<\/p>\n

Another approach to bridging the employment gap is to change the way in which the building industry is viewed. By educating people to expand their view of the trade and teaching people that construction is more than hard hats and light-reflecting mesh jackets, more individuals might start to see construction as a job for them.<\/p>\n

\n
About the Author:<\/div>\n
Tal Potishman, editor of Heating Central, writes<\/a> articles about plumbers<\/a>, central heating, Victoria boiler<\/a>, underfloor heating and solar thermal. He specializes in helping save money by advising on efficient heating.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With green blankets covering the buildings and cranes looming darkly overhead, Britain’s commercial building boom doesn’t seem to be much affected by the economic slump. As other industries cut back, the commercial building industry is not doing so, which is resulting in a noticeable shortage of workers to meet the demands of British construction companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-7466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-based-business","tag-home-based-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}