Addressing the skills and labour shortages in food manufacturing

It is no secret that the food manufacturing sector is facing significant challenges in attracting and retaining staff, both skilled and unskilled.

While industry organisations like the Food and Drink Federation are working with government bodies to find short term solutions like creating a 12-month Covid 19 recovery visa, what can individual businesses do to mitigate this problem in the mid to long term?

Apprenticeships

Working closely with schools and catering colleges to offer apprenticeships and clear career pathways used to be commonplace, however over the past 20 years this practice has dwindled thanks to the easy availability of talent from across the EU.

The food manufacturing sector has traditionally not been seen as an attractive career destination and more work needs to be done by industry organisations and individual businesses to get into schools earlier at Key Stages 3 and 4 to improve the image and perception of the industry.

One company that has had success in this area is Avara Foods. Operations Director Philip Davidson explains “all of our factories have relationships with local schools and attend STEM events, attending with some of our younger employees and apprentices to talk about their experiences. We also take along robots for the students to operate and show them videos of the factory processes. In this way we forge links with the local communities where we operate and give students a direct way to contact us which results initially in interest and ultimately in applications for apprenticeships and technical operator roles.”

“We have also partnered with universities and technical colleges to create technical apprenticeships and more recently degree apprenticeships. A degree apprentice joins us at 18 and undertakes their degree over a 5-year period alongside employment with us, enabling them to graduate with 5 years work experience and no student debt. We have found this approach to be very successful, leading to greater loyalty and retention. From an employer perspective this is essentially a 5-year interview process which creates a greater certainty that we are selecting the right candidates to be our future leaders.”

Increase wages and benefits

This is the approach that many companies are taking, and salaries for factory workers are now the highest they have ever been. However, it is not an effective solution in the longer term as every other manufacturer raises their pay rates to match the market. Ultimately the labour costs for all businesses increase and the cost of finished goods goes up.

Philip Davidson, Operations Director of Avara Foods says “we had seen for some time that significant changes were taking place in the labour market, although these have undoubtedly been accelerated by both Brexit and Covid-19. We made a conscious decision to overhaul our approach to recruitment and implement long-term strategies to change the nature of employment that meets individual needs around family or caring responsibilities and offers greater work/life balance. Job-sharing, part-time work around school hours or term times and flexible shift patterns have existed for years in sectors such as hospitality and healthcare so we have borrowed from that experience and brought in flexible contracts and adapted our HR systems accordingly. This has proved to be very popular and enables us to both attract and retain talent.”

Build new factories in areas of high unemployment

There are many deprived areas in the country where government grants are available to businesses to support in building new facilities that will create jobs. The challenge is that the food manufacturing industry has traditionally been focused around hubs from the north of London to the East Midlands, and companies tend to build their factories near to retailers’ distribution centres.

It is essential to take into account transportation and distribution costs along with building costs, labour costs and availability, funding grants and operational costs in a detailed feasibility study when considering major capex investments.

Process automation

In recent years robotics technology has evolved at pace, while also becoming more accessible in terms of costs. Coupled with the ongoing critical labour shortages, this is leading companies to consider longer term investment cycles to automate processes, reduce head count and improve output.

Investment projects that would have been unpalatable to boards just five years ago are now being seriously considered.

But automation is not just about reducing headcount, as Philip Davidson of Avara Foods explains. “We have been committed to changing the nature of employment for some time, by automating the manual, repetitive, mundane tasks and creating more technical roles for process checking and machine operators and technicians. Working in a factory now requires a different skill set and offers work that is more interesting, requires more skill and offers more reward. From the employers perspective, our employee proposition changes from offering jobs to offering careers and in the changing market that is essential.”

The reality is that the current labour challenges are not going away any time soon so businesses will have to take a pragmatic approach and consider all possible options for long term stability.

DDK is a leading construction consultancy in the food and speciality manufacturing sector. Our expert team of food manufacturing specialists have over 100 years of combined project management experience in the food and speciality manufacturing industry, having delivered £5+ billion of capital projects ranging from £1m to £150m with multisite investment programmes from £200m to £500m.

Services offered by DDK range from feasibility studies and concept designs through to equipment and process specifications, tendering and construction management, transition planning and delivery of a fully operational facility.

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