Stumbling on without specialists

By Selwyn Parker

Tony Gibson, vice-president of the Institute of Professional Engineers, happens to be a good example of what is missing in what he calls the "ingenuity economy." This is slightly different but similar to the knowledge economy.

Mr Gibson is a fire engineer, a species that is vital in practically all construction jobs right now but almost non-existent in this country.

Fire engineers are highly skilled in designing buildings that comply with fire safety regulations.

The trouble is there is only one fire engineering degree available here and it is at the University of Canterbury.

"Fire engineers can't be found for love or money," sighs John Williams, managing director of recruitment company Lawson Williams.

"Scarce as hen's teeth," adds a spokesman for Technology Recruitment.

The substantial shortfall in this obscure but important skill neatly illustrates one of the main reasons why our economy is slow to grow. Namely, not enough skills or the wrong ones.

According to Mr Gibson, who naturally supports his own discipline, there is a marked absence of wealth-building talent such as engineers.

The number of engineers per working 10,000 people is about 50. That compares with the historically fastest-growing nations such as the United States with 150 engineers per 10,000, Japan with more than 200 per 10,000, West Germany (180), Sweden (320) and even Australia (more than 100).

"We have probably fewer engineers than any other OECD country per head of population," says Mr Gibson.

For him, the ingenuity economy is built on the ability to apply technology across disciplines (the use of fail-safe engineering to build 30m yacht masts, for example), R&D and education.

But the shortage of engineers is just one example of the gaping holes in the know-how that underpins a growth economy. There is a dearth of talent running from apprentices and receptionists to electronic engineers and senior managers.

Just about the only skills in ample supply are unskilled labour, sales and marketing, and lawyering.

Take technicians. "Very difficult to find staff," says Gary Hassall, joint owner of Matrix Masts, which is one of the key companies in the booming yacht construction sector.

He blames the collapse of the apprenticeship system.

Or take receptionists. "Skills in short supply?" asks Jan Wallace, managing director of recruitment company Alpha. "Companies are hammering on the door for temporary and permanent staff."

These days though, employers do not want receptionists just to answer the phone but for word processing or spreadsheeting.

To the shortage of receptionists, she adds secretaries, clerical staff and accounts clerks.

"Have they all gone overseas?" Jan Wallace wonders.

Take call centres, one of the engines of growth in e-commerce.

"Auckland needs 6000 call-centre seats," says Christine Rosser, business development manager for Westaff. Banks and retailers want to hire people 40 at a time but cannot find nearly enough.

Or take just about every specialisation except perhaps rocket scientists. A variety of recruitment companies despair of finding enough traffic and transportation engineers, cost accountants, warehouse managers, packaging engineers specialising in design and product applications, food technologists with qualifications in flavours and ingredients, purchasing experts familiar with the latest software, specialists in automated systems.

There is even a shortage of middle-management accountants, although the universities are turning out BComs in droves.

Personnel consultants say they are lucky if they can find one candidate to offer to employers in some of these areas. The obvious conclusion: in the matter of employable skills, generalisation does not cut it.

Clearly, this dearth of specialist talent across all sectors illustrates a fault-line dividing education and the economy. The main parties recognise the need to rectify the situation but differ markedly in their approach.

"New Zealand skill levels are low by world standards," says the Labour Party in its blueprint for growth. "Others countries are rapidly moving ahead of us."

Labour pins its hopes for a higher-skilled, growth economy on the restoration of apprenticeships and traineeships for non-trade jobs such as clerical, retail and hospitality industries. The party wants nothing less than a "dramatic rise" in apprentices.

It is going to be hard to do but Labour also promises that within three years of taking office it would ensure that nobody left school "without options in education, training or employment."

The commercial sector, starting with companies of more than 200 employees, will be expected to take a leading role in this.

A Labour government would require companies to develop industry-approved training programmes.

On this, Max Bradford, Minister for Enterprise and Commerce, agrees. "We still have a long way to go [on improving skills]," he observes in a Government booklet, Bright Future.

"There is still a reluctance among many firms to implement effective training programmes and to see training as an investment."

For the minister, there are problems at the bottom and top.

Not only do we lack literacy and numeracy, we are short on specialists in information technology, biotechnology and software engineering.

The Government has a detailed, multiple solution. Among other measures, it is rolling out $30 million in scholarships for the brightest students, especially those in technical disciplines.

It is trying to reduce the percentage of the population - at present, 29 per cent - who have no formal qualifications. And it is developing top-to-bottom strategies to encourage entrepreneurs, including easier and cheaper capital.

But the real problem in the skills shortage may lie as much with New Zealanders as with training structures. Perhaps the general realisation has yet to sink in that skills have to be tailored to meet the requirements of the employment market, and that those requirements change all the time.

* Contributing writer Selwyn Parker is available at wordz@xtra.co.nz.