Oil & Gas UK Economic Report 2014

apprentices and graduates can be increased and more companies can be encouraged to take part. During the past year, Oil & Gas UK has continued to work, often with the industry’s skills body, OPITO, on projects to alleviate the shortage of skilled people: • Oil & Gas UK has established links with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Career Transition Partnership, the organisation that holds the contract to support those leaving military service into new employment, to help redeployment of military personnel. Meanwhile, OPITO is continuing to work with the MoD to map skills in industry and military roles and is developing an online tool to make the matching of such skills easier and faster. • Smarter training solutions – the industry, with Scottish Enterprise, continues to develop proposals for the possible development of facilities that could be used as assessment/proving centres for skilled workers from other industries and to reduce the offshore training time required (scoping work under way at time of writing). • Discussions on immigration policy with the government to ease the recruitment of skilled personnel from non-EU countries. This resulted in the retention of oil and gas related jobs on the Shortage Occupation List 16 with some additional roles being added. • Working with OPITO and BIS to produce an updated Labour Market Intelligence report which will underpin the future agenda for skills.

• Education – pooling resources and effort under the auspices of OPITO to enable the industry to reachmore schools throughout the country, more often and with a consistent message about the importance of and opportunities afforded by studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects. Although there is no difficulty in attracting new entrants to the industry, it is important for the longer term to sustain a flow of school leavers and graduates with STEM qualifications, not just for this industry, but also for the wider economy.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

16 See www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/308513/shortageoccupationlistapril14.pdf

91

ECONOMIC REPORT 2014