The water industry is set for a significant boost following the announcement of a major investment by several leading companies. But how can employers and the sector as a whole attract and encourage more people to consider water as a viable career option, and what does the influx of investment mean for water industry recruitment?

Transformative investment programme

According to the latest reports, the market could be set for an influx of new talent, following a recent announcement from several employers that they are launching ambitious recruitment plans to attract over 5,000 new apprentices to support the delivery of projects worth £96bn between 2025 and 2030. The news, which was announced during National Apprenticeship Week, is designed to encourage school leavers and job seekers to consider water as a viable career choice. In total, this spending is expected to lead to a 50% increase in the workforce, with more than 30,000 highly skilled jobs to be created.

This transformative project is one of the largest investment programmes in Europe and will support the delivery of schemes that help to guarantee a stable supply of clean water. Apprentices will be at the forefront of these projects with ten new reservoirs to be built alongside 28 new wetland areas. Companies will also develop new transfer schemes to move water from wetter parts of the country to drier regions while the sector as a whole is proposing to triple the current level of investment to reduce storm overflow spills by up to 140,000 each year. The industry also has a plan to modernise the nation’s sewers with funding being directed to help build thousands of huge underground storage tanks, use nature-based schemes to control rainfall and treat wastewater, and upgrade pipes to become “smart sewers”, which can intelligently control flows.

It’s encouraging to see efforts go into developing more robust pipelines for a sector that, as we all know, has been impacted by major skills shortages. However, planning to recruit thousands of new professionals is very different from actually hiring them, and employers will need to think about attraction methods that will encourage talent to choose water over other sectors.

Challenging market

Externally, the water industry receives a tough time, with the majority of the focus in the external media dedicated to sewage and environmental matters. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast and firms are never going to receive praise for keeping the taps running, but will always be under the spotlight when something goes wrong.

This makes talent attraction challenging; some young people will naturally be dissuaded from working in the sector by reputational issues. In fact, research from KPMG has found that one in three young people have turned down job offers because of the employer’s stance on environment and social governance. This trend means that employers that are being tarnished by negative headlines will need to work even harder to recruit talent, particularly at the younger end of the market. But how can they boost their talent pipelines and encourage more people into the industry?

Water industry recruitment

There are different approaches to encouraging more professionals into the industry, but they all centre around promoting some of the elements of working in water more effectively than they have done in the past. As we all know, there is so much more to the water industry than most people imagine and, particularly with the growing adoption of technology, employers are now looking for a considerably wider range of skills and expertise than they ever have done in the past.

Water offers a variety of different specialisms and fields for professionals to operate within and while there is significant demand for engineers, there are also opportunities for IT and digital specialists, project and site managers, amongst many other roles. This range of opportunities needs to be publicised more widely than it has been in the past and encourage a wider pool of applicants to consider water.

As we approach AMP8, demand is only going to increase further and new professionals in the industry will be moving into a dynamic and fast-paced environment. If your business is likely to require new talent to meet the demands driven by major investments into the water sector, then speak to our specialist team.

We also recently launched our Water Industry Hiring Report survey, enabling our experienced water engineers to provide their insights on the state of the market, the latest hiring trends and future anticipated demand, enabling our specialist consultants to be able to best meet the demands of the professionals that we work with.

We would love to hear your thoughts, and if you haven’t completed the survey then you can do so by following the link below. Submitting your information also automatically puts you in with a chance of securing a £50 Amazon voucher.

You can enter the Water Industry Hiring survey by clicking here 

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