Chemicals industry 'must face up to image problem'

London – Young people on average appear to be more instinctively receptive to environmentalism than their elders: leaving them increasingly reluctant to work in many industries – even those following strong green agendas.

A recently published UK report, titled ‘A greenprint on skills for the low carbon industries’, confirms this trend, which will be of little surprise to anyone involved in the chemicals & polymers sector.

While the Cogent Skills study acknowledged that the recruitment issue was not new, it found that attitudes have become more entrenched in recent years.

The departure of many older skilled workers, encouraged by the lockdown experience, together with the smaller size of the young adult worker cohort has contributed to increasing competition with other employers.

So too has the greater sense of urgency and moral purpose around the transition to the green economy.

In principle, the latter ought not to prove a deterrent given that the chemicals sector is at the forefront of 'greening' efforts.

In practice, it is – because so many potential recruits do not perceive that the chemicals sector is on the side of transition: their contemporary references are dominated by images of its most extreme impacts.

For previous generations, industry was highly visible, often dominating towns’ economies and local employment. Modern high-tech industry is rarely so embedded within communities.

This in turn feeds the view politicians and public that manufacturing is something the UK did but no longer does, cementing the belief that it represents past, not future employment.

And, as the likes of BP in the oil & gas sector know well, changing brand perception is a slow process that requires reinforcement and evidence.

The chemicals sector, suggests the report, could start with rehabilitating its name – which like ‘engineer’, has a somewhat negative connotation for a younger audience.

Conveying the sector’s green credentials may be a challenge but the proof is abundant: water purification & treatment, sustainable agriculture, carbon capture & utilisation, energy-storage, bio-chemistry, among many other examples.

And while transparency is rarely associated with industry, chemical companies have been exemplary adopters of initiatives in areas such as product stewardship and corporate sustainability reporting.

While the chemicals industry’s back-catalogue of achievement is a powerful corrective, perceptions are as powerful as facts in shaping attitudes, continued the Cogent Skills report.

“If the transitioning industries are not viewed as being part of the solution, they will struggle to attract the workforce," according to Cogent.

This, it warned, will limit the industry's ability "to deliver the considerable disruptive technological improvements that are so important to the national effort for net zero.”

Article from Process Engineering, a UK-based associate publication of ERJ.