FUSION Issue 3-2026 DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 12
RECRUITMENT
THE PEOPLE
PROBLEM
Manufacturing has spent a decade solving its technology problem.
The harder problem, the one nobody quite knows how to fix, is
finding the people who can run it.
“ Manufacturing technology
has never been more capable.
And yet three in four
manufacturers say the thing
holding them back is not
technology. It is people.”
And yet, across the UK, three in four manufacturers
say the thing actually holding their business back is not
technology. It is people. Specifically, the lack of people
with the skills to use the technology they already have.
Two shortages, not one
It helps to separate what is actually happening into
two distinct problems, because they require different
solutions and they are often talked about as though
they are the same thing.
The first is a straightforward numbers problem.
Roughly 42 per cent of current UK manufacturing
vacancies are what the Office for National Statistics
classifies as skill-shortage vacancies: roles that go
unfilled specifically because applicants lack the
relevant skills or experience, not because the jobs
themselves are unattractive or poorly paid. That figure
has risen sharply since 2017, when it stood at 29 per
cent. The shortage is not stabilising. It is accelerating.
In around four years, close to a fifth of the people currently working in UK manufacturing
and engineering will retire. That is not a forecast built on pessimism. It is demographics, and
demographics do not negotiate. To stand still, the sector needs to recruit roughly 186,000
skilled workers every single year. To grow, it needs considerably more than that.
Meanwhile, the machines those retiring workers operate are changing faster than almost
any point in living memory. Collaborative robots that used to require specialist programmers
now run on simplified, near-conversational interfaces. Predictive maintenance systems flag
failures before they happen. Digital twins simulate entire production lines before a single
part is made. By most measures, manufacturing technology has never been more capable,
more accessible, or more impressive.
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The second problem is more subtle and arguably more
dangerous. It is a knowledge problem rather than a
numbers problem. The skilled technicians and engineers
approaching retirement carry decades of accumulated,
undocumented knowledge: the specific sound a machine
makes just before a bearing fails, the slight adjustment
a process needs on a humid day, the workaround for a
quirk in a piece of equipment that nobody wrote down
because everyone who needed to know simply knew.
When that person retires, the knowledge does not
transfer automatically. It simply leaves.
Why automation has not solved this
There is a comfortable assumption that automation and
robotics will simply absorb the labour shortage, and to
an extent, this is true. Industrial robots are increasingly
capable of working safely alongside people, adapting
to variable production environments, and handling
tasks that used to require dedicated specialists. The
technology genuinely has improved enormously.
