Employability of GEES graduates: issues from the Environment Agency

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Employability of GEES graduates issues from the
Environment Agency

• Chris Thomas
• Head of Business for Geoscience

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What will I be talking about ?

• What does the Environment Agency do?
• What is the scale of our GEES related work?
• What are our issues about employability of GEES
  graduates, especially geoscientists?
• What have we been doing to solve the problem?

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What does the Environment Agency do?

• Leading body protecting and improving the
  environment in England and Wales
• Protection, improvement and regulation of air,
  land and water
• Largest UK employer of hydrogeologists
• 2nd largest UK employer of geoscientists
• 13000 staff more than 60 from a range of GEES
  backgrounds

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What GEES related work do we do?

• Environmental advice, regulation, monitoring,
  protection, incidents, flood risk management
• Water quality and resources, conservation, flood
  defence, fisheries, ecology, land quality,
  recreation, air quality, envt. planning
• Field officers, specialist technical roles and
  supporting office based roles

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What is the scale of the work?

• 350 geoscientists
• 1200 field officers
• 1300 policy and science staff
• 1200 environmental monitoring staff
• 1500 flood risk management roles
• plus hydrology, hydrometry, geomorphology, land
  use, climate change, sustainability etc

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What are our entry requirements?

• Generally, a good relevant scientific degree for
  all GEES related roles
• Geoscience / science research- traditionally
  needed a postgraduate degree
• Flood risk management- we run a foundation degree
  for new starters
• Further internal development training /
  experience before capable to work alone

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Starting salaries

• Junior team member (generalist)-19K
• Team member (more specialist)- 24K
• Technical specialist- 30K
• Senior technical specialist- 38K

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What issues have we had with recruitment and
retention?

• Geoscience
• Reduction in postgraduate courses and suitable
  applicants
• High turnover of staff especially after 2-3
  years- pay related
• Could easily attract graduates but missing skills
• Increased need for extra specialist training,
  previously provided by universities
• Spending 1.5M p.a on consultants to fill gaps

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What have we done about it?

• Identified key capabilities for geoscientists
• health and safety
• personal behaviours
• core technical knowledge
• application of that knowledge to various
  activities
• Developed linked training-internal and external-
  and coaching / mentoring scheme

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What were the results initially?

• 20 staff dont meet entry capabilities
• 40 staff need supervision to do their work
• 40 staff under 5 years experience
• Significant gap in core technical abilities in
  new recruits
• Gap in our internal training for these skills

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What did we do about it?

• Link to UWE to develop modular M.Sc in
  Environmental Management
• Link to other universities for existing post
  grad. courses/modules
• Reinforcing recruitment criteria with team
  leaders
• Targeting improvement in core skills
• Developed a workforce plan

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What has happened during the last year?

• After 12 months, in geoscience, we have a
  significant improvement in core technical skills
  but still a way to go
• TDF endorsed by the Geological Society, CIWEM and
  SiLC
• Endorsed certificates of Practising Geologist
  and Practising Environmental Regulator

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What else?

• Progressing adoption of the TDF and associated
  training approach across the brownfield industry
• Sharing our approach with the oil and gas
  industry
• Rolling out TDFs for field officers, industry
  regulators, all field monitoring and appraisal,
  hydrology, science, policy etc

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Conclusion

• Reduction in the number of courses and changing
  syllabi at schools and universities have an
  impact on employers
• Employers are having to fill in gaps in technical
  knowledge of graduates
• We have particular issues in geoscience,
  hydrology, civil engineering and land use
  planning
• We all need to work together to solve the
  problems