Category: Supply Chain and Procurement

Don’t worry – we’re not going to try to convince you to stay or leave Europe. Instead, I wanted to take a look at the impact the upcoming vote may have on the availability of supply chain talent – regardless of the nation’s decision.

I went back and looked through our supply chain placements for the last two years to see where our candidates came from. Here’s what I found:

• 64% of placed candidates were from the EU
• 29% were local (British) candidates
• 7% were from the remaining international community

Since nearly two-thirds of all supply chain vacancies were filled with candidates from the European Union, over 70% when you include the rest of the world, any change affecting the international flow of talent into the UK deserves further investigation into the impact it will have on supply chain staffing and recruiting. Brexit is not the only challenge facing this vertical today; instead it is putting added emphasis on all other talent related trends such as, hiring plans and visa related regulatory requirements.

How could Brexit (stay or leave) effect the flow of future jobs?

The 2015 SCM World Future of Supply Chain Survey found that 40% of the UK based companies they surveyed planned to add to the headcount of their supply chain teams (including manufacturing, logistics, sourcing and planning jobs) in the next three years. Although those growth plans were not contingent on the results of the Brexit decision, they will be affected by its outcome.

A ‘leave’ vote will put immigration into the unknown, no dramatic changes are likely to happen in short term and in the long term it could be better for highly skilled employees from the UK which would be great to see. However, the system at the moment does tend to work well as it is (certainly from a Supply Chain Recruitment perspective) which raises the question:

What job trends do we expect to see in the short to medium term?

One outcome may be that highly skilled workers will be less attracted to come to the UK as changes may mean that they will be limited to work here for a few years (however long their visa’s last) before having to return to their home country.

Looking back to the past 5 years we have seen many global manufacturing businesses moved supply chain functions as per the business needs, for example planning, customer service/order processing functions have relocated from the UK to Europe and vice versa, will a ‘leave’ vote mean the relocation of more supply chain functions internationally and therefore displace the need for supply chain talent in the UK? Certainly another factor in my opinion.

What are the other factors to consider?

Salaries

Clearly, I’m no expert but everything I’ve read on the impact of a potential Brexit on talent is that no one knows exactly what will happen. For instance, effective April 2016, £35,000 became the minimum annual salary needed to qualify to apply for a permanent residence visa in the UK. Looking through the placements we’ve made in the last 2 years the majority of supply chain placements fall in the £25,000-£40,000 range, and would be affected by this increase in threshold. There have been concerns raised about talent shortages that would be associated with the new salary threshold as well as the changes to immigration that may be driven by Brexit.

If it is so hard to know exactly what will happen after the vote, why should we try to predict the impact of Brexit on something as specific as supply chain talent?

Education

Naturally there will be a delayed response on the impact of Brexit from both Supply Chain candidates and employers who are waiting to see what leaving the EU will actually mean for them. If we take Education for instance, many professionals in the UK ‘fall into’ working in supply chain roles after graduating in other, often unrelated – degrees compared to a high proportion of European candidates. You would expect there to be a period of uncertainty while the UK market up-skills its existing supply chain self-sufficiency if the EU is no longer a viable to source talent.

Quality of talent

As all supply chain professionals know, supply and demand are affected by many forces that ultimately determine price and quality. Talent management is no exception. Having several factors to account for in the availability of high caliber, qualified talent certainly doesn’t reduce the challenge or uncertainty for companies trying to recruit the best talent available on the market.

There is a lot of debate about the impact Brexit will have on employers and their prospective employees; while we’re not in placing ourselves in the ‘stay’ or ‘leave’ camp, we’re definitely asking for companies and candidates to give some extra thought to the impact these changes will have on supply chain recruitment in the years to come.

On a slightly lighter note, I came across this post on social media over the weekend and thought it was amusing analogy:

We have all been on a night out with that mate who when you are in a club says “it’s shit here” let’s go somewhere else. Then when you leave you realise he has no idea where to go and the place you left won’t let you back in. Without a decent follow up plan a leave vote could see the UK standing in a kebab shop arguing about who’s fault it is.

I can see the point and from our perspective, we’d certainly like to know where our next drink is coming before leaving the club!

Picture this:

At the end of a busy workday, a woman walks into a shop next to the train station to buy a cold drink before her commute home. She goes straight to the fridge to grab a Coca Cola the way she has many times in the past. But today – the shelf is empty. “You’ve got to be joking,” she thinks to herself. “When is there ever no Coke?”

Just then, the assistant comes walking up from the back room pushing a trolley stacked high with Coke. “I’m sorry “he says, handing her a Coke. “The delivery was late today.”

How often do any of us really stop and think about the complex, sophisticated set of operations that make up any one supply chain, let alone the thousands of supply chains we depend upon on a regular basis? Everything we need – from food and drinks to clothes and building materials – it all has to start somewhere and then move through a number of steps and locations to reach its final destination.

Supply chains are impressive and frequently taken for granted, but could they possibly be sexy?

When we look at the level of influence that the supply chain has on an organisation, it’s amazing that supply chain professionals are not among the most highly celebrated and recognised members of the corporate team. Supply chain professionals have control over corporate resources, both inbound and outbound, and responsibility for all the operations required to make a raw material into a shiny new product.

The rise of the Internet and the resulting wave of tech start-ups has caused us to re-examine the sex appeal of the traditional ‘geek’ profile. The wardrobe of a software engineer or a supply chain professional may not be featuring on a runway anytime soon, but we’ve come to regard tech intelligence with an awe that has elevated the ‘cool factor’ of people lucky enough to apply their skills successfully. With their ability to drive costs down, agility up, and forecasts closer to the predictable horizon, supply chain professionals deserve equal ‘cool’ regard.

Supply chains often originate in some of the most exotic parts of the world. As the result of globalisation, a company is just as likely to deal with a factory in the Far East or a sugar producer in the Caribbean, and while many of those locations have intrinsic sex appeal, so do the logistics that move goods from them to processors and consumers around the world.

Take almost any product in our environment – cosmetics, a designer handbag, or even a bag of Walker’s crisps – not only did the raw materials or packaging likely come from another part of the world, they may have traveled through multiple countries on their journey to becoming the object you now hold in your hand. Supply chain has gone through an evolution that led them from vertical integration to something that resembles a virtual operation.

There was a time when a food producer would only hire supply chain professionals that had experience in their industry, and the same would be true for a fashion or jewellery company. Now, however, it is increasingly common to see supply chain professionals working in industries that they have no previous experience in, for example someone with a food background can secure a role in a cosmetics business. This enables businesses to take best practice and value add from different supply chains, adding value and improving their own operation as well as being able to offer skills development and new experiences for each employee.

There is nothing simple about a successful modern supply chain, demand is unpredictable, lead times are long, and it would seem that everything – from soft cheeses to high end designed accessories – is ‘perishable’. Only supply chains, and the professionals that keep them running, make our standard of living possible.

Supply chain is at the heart of everything, it is cool, interesting and empowers the professionals in its ranks to make a real difference in business. In fact, supply chain professionals are often so focused on making success possible that they don’t stop to invest in their own brand or image.

As a result, supply chain is sometimes portrayed a bit boring or dry, a perception that could not be further from the truth. As we’ve discussed, supply chain is equal parts smart, exotic, influential, and diverse – making it undeniably (but unpretentiously) sexy.

This article was originally published by Jayna on LinkedIn.