Blog: Innovating to recruit the next generation of construction professionals

26 April 2024

Construction should remain a great place to build a career

Matt Buntine, Head of Sustainability and Consulting at Lendlease and SECBE Board member

Innovating to recruit the next generation of construction professionals

In this thought piece, Matt Buntine, the Head of Sustainability and Consulting at Lendlease, a SECBE Board member, a Non-Executive Director of a NGO, a Chartered Engineer with an Executive MBA from Henley Business School, reflects on the reasons and consequences of the skills shortage in construction and calls on the sector to consider new approaches to attracting talent and work even harder to retain it.

The challenge ahead 

Upon reflection, I have been truly fortunate in the career that I have had to date and the opportunities the construction industry has presented me. The sector has provided myself with opportunities to travel extensively, participate on some truly unique programmes, work for inspirational leaders and importantly challenged me to want to continuously improve as a professional. As I meet new graduates and apprentices to the industry, I am at pains to point out that there are some great opportunities ahead provided they are ready to tackle the challenges and be dedicated to the task. Despite the opportunities available, the construction industry continues to struggle to secure talent against its well-established rivals. Coupled with this, the sector globally remains impacted by economic, geo-political and climatic volatility, which in turn creates peaks and troughs in work security.

Securing the next generation of talent into the industry will be crucial to its long-term success. The sector has worked hard collectively, to improve the attractiveness of entering the construction workforce (Bain, 2022). However, construction still struggles to compete against other well-established industries who are advanced in visibly showcasing career advancement, investment, and stability. Coupled with this, the sector continues to battle with filling open positions and is faced with prolonged labour shortages, which compound the pressure on delivery objectives (Deloitte, 2023). The problem will simply not go away, and we need to consider new approaches to attracting talent and working even harder to retain it.

The facts 

The data to emphasise the skill shortage and the challenge to attract people to the industry speaks for itself.

• The Construction Skills Network (CSN) projects that the UK requires over 45,000 workers per year just to meet the current demand.
• Over 750,000 UK construction workers will retire in the next 15 years (ICE, 2023).
• There is a continued threat to meeting the ambitious 2050 climate targets if there is no focus on the construction skills shortage.
• The RICS (2023) recently highlighted their concerns that the industry continues to face a lack of qualified workers entering the industry, which is leading to project delays and increased stresses on business to retain staff from competition.
• On average it costs 33% of a person’s salary to replace them (Equity report, 2022)

What can be done to attract and retain future talent? 

There are a number of areas which industry leaders could consider in their approach to recruiting the next generation of the workforce. Some of my thoughts around this are:

• Offering progressive employment and flexible practices which will give businesses and employees a broader pool of skills to draw upon (Deloitte, 2023). SECBE are doing this already through their CoTrain apprenticeship programme which provides a shared apprenticeship scheme to expand apprentices’ learning experience with different hosts. Timewise is another organisation actively leading the promotion of how to implement successful flexible working programmes.
• Increasing visibility of the talent established in the industry and showcasing how their careers are progressing. We need to be proud of the industry and tell more of our success stories.
• Giving the Next Generation an early voice to remain curious and share their ideas in a safe environment. We too often ignore the ideas being generated at all levels of organisations. Promoting groups such as the G4C Future Leaders network empowers young leaders to elevate their voices and nurture innovative ideas within a supportive community of peers who share similar aspirations.
• To widen the talent pool, we need to consider hiring a diverse workforce and attracting prospective employees from new backgrounds. People entering a 2^nd career, persons with disabilities and under-represented ethnic groups will widen the talent pool (Deloitte, 2023).

In conclusion, to attract talent, we need to collaboratively learn from each other, innovate in our approach to recruitment and remain curious about how we can continuously improve our industry's offer. Construction should remain a great place to build a career.

Matt Buntine is the Head of Sustainability and Consulting at Lendlease, a SECBE Board member, a Non-Executive Director of a NGO, a Chartered Engineer with an Executive MBA from Henley Business School. Matt’s principal areas of interest include sustainable energy, corporate strategy, leadership, people development and international business. Professionally Matt has experience in leading complex development programmes for multiple blue chip clients across sectors including energy transformation (EVC, Hydrogen and Solar), industrial, infrastructure, commercial and oil & gas. Through delivering these projects, Matt is experienced in leading culturally diverse multi-functional international teams (both internal and external) of people in various stages of career development. Matt is passionate about giving back to the industry by supporting the NGO/Charity sector and he is currently working as a Non Executive Director of SECBE. He has previously collaborated with Mates In Mind mental health in construction charity, in which his team won their High Impact Award.

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