Thank you for agreeing to participate in our Skills Survey. This request has been sent to you as you are our principal point of contact for your organisation for surveys and matters where one collective response is required. You may wish to pass this request to a suitable colleague, or work with colleagues across your business, to complete the return.
We need the help of Scotland’s manufacturing and engineering companies to address one of the most significant threats to our sector: skills shortages. Many businesses are already experiencing challenges in sourcing key skills, and this is expected to intensify due to demographic changes, including a falling birth rate and an ageing workforce, alongside increasing demand across critical sectors.
A collective group of organisations that support and represent industry has come together to gather robust evidence on current and future skills requirements. This will enable us to identify gaps, support investment decisions, and ensure that the importance of manufacturing to Scotland’s economy is fully recognised.
The data we require will provide insight into both current workforce levels and future demand. The survey is aligned to the same standard job descriptions and codes used in the sector’s annual pay benchmarking survey, allowing for reliable comparisons across datasets.
By collecting this data directly, we aim to build a clear and accurate picture of workforce requirements across the sector.
The data we need per job code is broken down as:
- Current number of employees in each role
- Forecast demand for additional headcount for each of the next four years
- Forecast demand for replacement headcount for each of the next four years
- Current plans to train or develop these additional and replacement employees
- Current maximum training capacity for each role (number of individuals that can be trained per year)
If you are part of a multi-site business, please complete one survey by site if there are material differences in workforce structure, demand, or training capacity.
You should provide a single, consolidated response. Where exact figures are not available, a reasonable estimate is sufficient and will not reduce the value of the data.
If you do not employ any people in a specific job code, there is nothing you need to complete for that role.
We understand that roles within your organisation may not align perfectly with the job codes provided. In such cases, please select the closest relevant code and provide any additional context in the notes section.
We also recognise that training approaches and capacity may vary across different parts of your organisation. If you have multiple approaches or figures per category, please include detail in the notes.
We are collecting this information to help build a clear evidence base of future skills demand. This will support industry and stakeholders in identifying potential gaps that could result in lost opportunity for Scotland, and help ensure that solutions receive the priority and funding they require.
The success of this work depends heavily on the volume and quality of responses. We encourage you to complete this survey and, where possible, share it within your network and supply chain in Scotland.
All data provided will be treated in strict confidence. We will only produce aggregated outputs and will not share any information that would allow individual organisations to be identified. The data will be maintained and processed within Scottish Engineering only.
Thanks for your help in providing this essential information.