Uncovering market labour trends across core STEM markets

No matter the size of your company, the country you operate in, or the industry you serve, right now, businesses all over the world are experiencing an unprecedented shift. And the global pandemic is affecting all organisations in different ways.
At Progressive Recruitment, our purpose is to bring skilled people together to build the future. This is a purpose that continues to drive us, and we believe that in our 30 years of business, it’s a purpose that’s more important today than it ever has been before.
Discovering insights
As the world continues to navigate an evolving situation, we continue to support businesses across the globe. We support these businesses by connecting them with highly-skilled talent across the engineering and energy space.
But right now, the landscape of all STEM industries has been impacted. In order to provide truly specialist staffing solutions that meet the needs of the markets we serve, we know how important it is to understand the specific needs of our customers.
An exclusive report
Recently, we reached out to our global network of clients to find out how the current situation has impacted them. Thanks to their contribution, we’ve been able to put together a market trends report that offers data-driven insights across core STEM industries.
We’ve been able to determine key trends regarding issues across digitisation, skills demand, and flexible working – shining the spotlight on engineering, energy, life sciences, and technology in particular. With this data, we’ve examined the impact on these industries and made some considerations as to potential future trends.
Our key findings
Our survey offered some interesting insights (another word) into a number of key areas that are impacting STEM industries across the board. These included:
- AI and automation
- The future of remote working
- The impact on supply chain
Scott McKenzie, Head of Strategic Planning at SThree, commented on the findings, ‘As we get a little bit of the certainty back, as to how we think this pandemic will unfold - will the vaccine come in 3 months? will it come in 9 months? - that is the great unknown which influences decisions. What we do know for a fact is that our clients are thinking about these things, these options that may have been off the table for a number of years are now coming back on. It's not just about trying to squeeze margin out of the system, it's about saying I'll take 2 or 3% of margin hit just to ensure that my business can continue.’
We explore our findings in more detail throughout the report.
Virtual chats
Mark Dorman, CEO of SThree, also hosted a virtual chat with Scott as part of our #STEMSeries. Together, they explored some of the finer details from our insights and spoke about what this could mean for the STEM talent pipeline.
According to Mark, ‘You can see that trend of salaries being based on some extrapolation of sweat of the brow hourly work will be replaced over time, more and more with outcome. It's certainly a trend in the future and that notion that flexible working, just like the application of technology, has probably been accelerated significantly by the pandemic.’
You can view their entire chat from beginning to end.
Continuing to build connections
Across SThree and our family of brands, we continue to connect candidates and clients. So, if we can help you, then please do get in touch. Whatever you’re needs – we’re here for you.