How can we make Technical exciting?!

I actually think that this is an exciting time to be in Technical (despite some of my doom and gloom posts of late).  If we can get the culture stuff working as it should, this could genuinely be a game changer.  

I look at where food safety is now in UK cultures and it's where health and safety was when I started in the food industry (ahem) over 20 years ago.

There is some genuinely different thinking coming into manufacturing in some spheres.  If we can get some key parties to listen, it could be transformational.

But as I alluded to before, we have a shortage of Technical people in industry and I always think Technical people with Operations experience are very valuable.  So how could we entice people from Operations, NPD etc into the sexy world of Technical?

Hi GMO,

I tend to pick promising people out to work on technical projects, for example in the past I have had QA people with degrees in microbiology who I have put on special projects such as drafting an environmental monitoring programme for the site and developing accelerated shelf life tests for fresh and long life products. People need to see there are opportunities away from the routine if they have the right attitude/potential/knowledge. I am happy assist with the knowledge part if necessary with people of the right attitude and potential.

Kind regards,

Tony

Money is always a good way to draw people in, haha.

I think what's critical to bringing people into Technical is having, or being, a good mentor. A mentor must have the ability to see a person's potential, but also the authority to "bring them in" so-to-speak. For instance, if you are a manager and know a great employee with potential but that employee's manager refuses to let them cross-train outside of their department...that's an issue.

Make it sexy!  Or whatever adjective is approved by HR  :thumbdown: .  

I kind of get the impression that both 'manufacturing' and 'food' just don't have the social appeal that "tech" jobs do to an increasingly large portion of the population.  In much the same way that most people look down on sanitation work.

With an increasingly urban population the idea of making things and working in an environment than can be messy becoming more and more foreign to the average person, so something as unglamorous as manufacturing food just doesn't grab people's attention the way one of those "when I grow up" job fields do.

Like ChristinaK said, pay them more.  The smart people will figure it out for themselves.