Furrowed brows, frenzied scribbling and impassioned speeches were commonplace at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs' (DEFRA) Innovation Centre in Reading last month, as food and drink industry representatives brainstormed their way through a recruitment crisis.
Improve chief executive Jack Matthews addressed the intrepid group at DEFRA's Innovation Centre first, outlining exactly how serious the lack of competent and experienced food science and technical staff was.
At any given time in the food industry, one in four food science and technical roles remained unfilled, said Matthews. Speaking directly to Food Manufacture, he said targeting all sexes, age groups and geographical areas equally was vital. "That South Bank University is attracting hundreds of food science students is great, but would you move to Garstang in Lancashire after qualifying in London? Probably not."
The ability to source personnel differed greatly in different regions, he said. "Yorkshire and Humber has no problem, but that's because it has the greatest concentration of food and drink businesses in the country." By contrast, businesses in parts of Wales or Scotland, which were less industrialised, faced some of the biggest challenges.
One specialist claimed processors needed to look at different approaches for men and women. He said many female food scientists and nutritionists joining the industry did not return after pregnancy, because their working hours often did not suit their roles as mothers.
Matthews said addressing the skills gap boiled down to three key issues. "First, migrant workers are a stopgap, not a solution. All they do is help to postpone the skills problem. Second, we need to look at how we encourage people into the sector. Last, we must look at how we utilise better skills and motivation within the existing workforce, because there's a huge untapped pool of ability here."
Following on from Matthews, professor Jack Pearce, immediate past president of the Institute of Food Science and Technology, analysed the adequacy of provision of UK food science training and courses.
There might have been growing numbers of courses with food in their title at colleges and universities, he said, but their quality differed wildly. There were even instances of such training being amalgamated with completely unrelated subjects, with qualifications such as 'dance and food studies'.
Pearce also said recruits often had to be aided in the practical application of theoretical learning. The other options were improving the skills of existing personnel or recruiting staff with transferrable skills from other sectors.
He added that the popularity of training courses varied. There had been a boom in the numbers of students signing up to food nutrition courses in recent years, possibly because healthy eating had adopted such a high profile. By contrast, more technical, scientific courses were attracting less interest.
Delegates split into teams to debate solutions. They identified poor industry image, inconsistent training standards and the lack of comprehensive data about perceptions of the industry and its needs as problems. Lack of joined up thinking was also highlighted.
Poor image was a constantly recurring theme. PR campaigns and industry champions to excite people about the sector and the career prospects it offered were proposed. One delegate said: "We need the champions of industry to nominate four or five of their senior managers to drive the message back down the line into schools." However, some cautioned that people should truly get their head round the problem first, before simply throwing money at the issue. Others said more cash could be invested in making the physical environment of factories more appealing.
One attendee questioned whether the real threat to the food industry's image was being addressed. Apathy could be a bigger concern, he said. "Food scares come and go. The major issue is getting the buy-in from manufacturers to address the skills shortage." He highlighted that the majority of those at the summit were working with the industry, not within it.
Companies used numerous excuses for not joining with others to address the skills problem, said one attendee. "Many people say 'there's no commercial value for us in doing this'. Is there a commercial value in corporate social responsibility? Often not, but if you only pay lipservice to it, you get your arse bitten."
The handful of delegates representing the industry came from the usual suspects which already recognised the urgency of addressing the skills black hole, such as Northern Foods.
Naomi Woods, the company's graduate talent and resourcing manager, said failure to acknowledge and take responsibility for the situation was not confined to small firms. "Are larger companies sold on doing something? It really does vary. Our technical director leads the way in supporting many of our initiatives, but other companies may not have such focus."
One delegate said: "What can be done? Not a lot, other than getting more firms to sponsor students, as Arla, Danone and Sainsbury do."
Even a company the size of Northern Foods sometimes struggled with its profile, said Woods. "One of our biggest challenges is firms knowing about us. Because we are predominantly an own-label operation, we are working hard on developing our brand."
The Northern Foods Foundation for Science & Technology uses a £450,000 pot to sponsor 30 food science undergraduate students through their three-year degrees at Leeds, Nottingham and Reading Universities. Northern Foods also supports Reading University's summer school for A-Level students, offering them a taster of its food industry qualifications and highlighting students' career prospects.
But it was not enough, said Woods, who revealed that the firm was sponsoring a summer school for June/July 2009, organised by Nottingham University for GCSE pupils. "If people don't do the right science GCSEs they can't take a food science degree, so you need to start thinking about things at that level."
Summing up, Matthews invited participants to contribute to an action group to implement solutions. "It would be a travesty for nothing to happen after today," he said. He pledged that Improve would draw up a strategy. FM
Diary of an apprentice - learning on the job
Elizabeth Bown, md of Jolly's Fish & Farm Produce, based on the Orkney Islands, is making sterling progress on her adult apprenticeship programme.
One of the beauties of the scheme is that it parallels the practical tasks she has to tackle in her role for the business. For example, Jolly's has just begun supplying the local Tesco store and consequently has had to be brought up to speed with the multiple's approach to product specification.
To this end, Bown is taking a module in this subject for her apprenticeship. The previous module she was taking covered food safety and critical control points in manufacture, which has also proved invaluable in enabling the firm to conform to Tesco's standards. "Tesco audited the factory and held some good training on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) procedures, so the module went alongside what we wanted to do anyway."
Bown describes the product specification module as the most complicated one so far, though not the hardest. "I actually found the first module on communication the hardest, because that's not one of my strengths. This module is brainwork and I quite like that sort of thing.
"I've got an afternoon with the trainer next week and I'm hoping most of the learning's going to be done by then and we'll have the necessary tools to put the unit into practice in the factory. Implementing this for some of our products will be tricky, but it will be good to get to grips with it."
However, once she has completed the module, it should improve production processes, she says. "It covers stuff such as, if products have to change, how do you deal with that?"
Bown says she chose the module because "I know there's a gap in my knowledge about this, but it's getting increasingly important as the business changes"
She now has to turn her mind to the modules she will study next, which she has not yet decided. "They have been very tailored to fit what I need at the time, which is what makes them so useful."