Manufacturing at risk from old boys club culture, research finds

Three quarters of quality engineers were men with a third having over 21 years experience according to the JAM survey of 260 candidates. The bias was not harmful at the moment, JAM commented. But, quality engineering faced a "retirement timebomb" unless it tackled the imbalance according to Lee Cartney, manager of the quality and manufacturing team at JAM. "The cloud on the horizon is that the majority of quality engineering candidates are male, and the workforce is ageing without being replenished. Unless more is done to even the balance between male and female Quality Engineering professionals, and attract new "up and coming" talent, the sector could be facing a retirement time bomb. He added: "As our economy moves towards recovery, quality engineering professionals will become increasingly important to the UK's manufacturing sector, but the question is, will there be enough talent to go round?" Quality engineers reported strong levels of job satisfaction in the JAM survey. Job variety of and the range of people worked with were scored the most attractive things about the role. Nearly 60% of quality engineers said they were optimistic about the future of the sector, the JAM research reported. Quality engineers named a lack of support from managers and shopfloor resistance to continuous improvement as their biggest job frustrations.