Employability of GEES graduates: issues from the Environment Agency

1. Employability of GEES graduates: issues from the Environment Agency Chris Thomas Head of Business for Geoscience

2. 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?

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Starting salaries • Junior team member (generalist)-£19K • Team member (more specialist)- £24K • Technical specialist- £30K • Senior technical specialist- £38K

8. 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

9. 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

10. What were the results initially? • 20% staff don’t 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

11. 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

12. 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’

13. 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

14. 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