TRS Supporters

It was chairing the Science and Technology Select  Committee that really sparked my interest in not only why the UK is so poor at getting young people to study STEM subjects, but why a significant number of those who begin a career in engineering or manufacturing don’t stay there. I also saw how, when companies go through restructuring and redundancies, there’s a real risk that highly skilled engineers disappear into othercareers. We can’t allow that to happen. TRS is helping to balance redundancies in one area with recruitment in another.

A further big challenge for the UK is how we signpost people to world class re-training opportunities. When people are let go from one organisation, they may see exciting new opportunities in another but be missing 10 per cent of the skills they need. They want swift and easy access to bespoke training that will make them desirable elsewhere. That’s the next focus for the TRS platform.

A lot of organisations talk about corporate social responsibility, but for some it’s just a tick in a box. The organisations that support TRS are demonstrating real corporate social responsibility. They are looking beyond their own needs to what benefits the wider engineering and manufacturing landscape. They have a genuine commitment to building and maintaining the skills pipeline that is vital to the future of UK plc.”

It’s really developed momentum since then and we’ve now expanded the concept – NSAR Connect – to include graduates and students looking for placements. I think that’s just the beginning. The platform we’ve developed with TRS means that anywhere in the rail industry where there’s a surplus of candidates in one area we have a mechanism for deploying them in another. And if our remit broadens to other transport sectors, then there’s every chance we’ll use the concept there too.

Everyone thinks it’s a fantastic idea – both those companies with surplus candidates and those who are looking for candidates. Most SMEs don’t have a dedicated HR specialist and their recruitment activity can be quite ad hoc. If they register with us, they have access to hundreds if not thousands of talented people, all wishing to work in the rail sector. This is all about putting the right people in front of employers for the good of the rail industry.

NSAR Connect is very much driven by the knowledge the TRS team has put into it. Why would we start from scratch when they have a provensystem and the intelligence and agility to deliver? This is just the first step in our relationship.”

TRS had an ideal platform that they tailored to fit our needs. We started using it three years ago and it’s really taken hold. We now encourage all our organisations to use it to match vacancies in one area with surplus skills in another.

We’ve found it far more beneficial working with TRS than a commercial consultancy, where it can often be all about the money. TRS have a much more collaborative and intelligent approach and they’re incredibly flexible. They’re thinking about the greater good rather than financial gain. We’re also exploring how they can help with graduate and apprentice recruitment. The NDA estate is massively oversubscribed and has to turn away many good people, so we’re looking at using the TRS platform to share them with our partner organisations. That’s another great thing about TRS – they understand the whole resourcing piece.”

What I like about the TRS solution is that it doesn’t just include the big name companies but their supply chain partners too. Students may just miss out on a placement with a large organisation, but there are others in the chain that need good quality students and the TRS site is a great way to drill down into that.

I’ve offered to set up a focus group for TRS so that we get feedback from students as well as employers. I’ve also met with the developers to share ideas. We want to make the site as appealing and easy to use as possible. The more streamlined the placement system is, the more students we’ll encourage use it and that will impact on our attractiveness as an industrial placement provider.

TRS has a wealth of knowledge and takes a strategic view. I can see this expanding to include advice on preparing for assessment centres, for example, or writing CVs – a one-stop-shop for people building their career.”

There’s a widely held view that the UK suffers from a shortage of engineering talent. We need to manage the pool of talent we have as effectively as possible and Talentview is a fresh approach to doing justthat. Some engineering students have good contacts in industry and will find placements, but a whole raft of them will struggle. TRS has developed a solution that gives students easy visibility of opportunities and which also helps companies connect to academia.”

Over the years we’ve seen many well-intended initiatives but there’s a lack of connectedness. What TRS do very effectively is to bring all the different stakeholders and sectors together and get them talking about the same things, using the same language. That has enormous potential.”

TRS are a neutral broker who have a genuine interest in keeping hold of the engineering skills that are critical for the nation. I think they have another role too – to bring together the deliverers of STEM-based training with employers. Teaching staff need to stay up-to-date with
what’s happening in industry and make sure they’re developing individuals with the skills industry needs. TRS helps to get companies and training providers talking to each other.”

We looked at other off-the-shelf options but saw that the TRS solution was much more cost-effective and flexible, plus it could cope with the complexity of our organisation. It’s an incredibly useful tool to track and control redeployment. We achieved our reduction without compulsory redundancies and the TRS platform has played a huge part in that. I’d say it’s saved us tens of millions of pounds in potential redundancy costs.

We’ve now developed a new, even more powerful portal to help manage restructuring in Rolls-Royce and we manage a global population of 9,500 through the system. It gives us the ability to filter and search by parameters such as grade, location and job, we can use it to advertise positions, and we can control access and set permissions by employee. The power of the system is enormous and it takes a massive amount of pain out of our corporate administration. Both portals have been very well-received in Rolls-Royce. They’re efficient, intuitive and very easy to use.

TRS are extremely accommodating, working with us to find a solution to whatever we’re trying to achieve. The other attraction is that they’re working across different sectors and sharing best practices; they’re constantly looking for better ways of doing things. TRS is much more than a jobs platform and has the opportunity to really strengthen industry as a whole through employee retention and redeployment.

We are about to run a number of pilot projects, tailoring them to specific business requirements, to prove the concept. It is worth noting that it is not just the capabilities that are attractive but the collaborative governance mechanism: TRS is industry-led with facilitation from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. This collaborative approach by TRS is evident in its association with professional institutions and trade associations and therefore chimes with the collaborative approach taken by the MoD more widely.”

We’ve worked with TRS during two major restructuring programmes, specifically to ensure that people who leave our organisation stay in the engineering and manufacturing industry. We promote those people through micro-sites on the TRS portal and find it’s a better way of bringing them to the attention of future employers. We can also contact the many companies registered with TRS and direct them to the CVs of quality people under the BAE name.”