Considering who benefits from cooling technology, and how quality affects fairness.

The fourth set of United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) to go under the spotlight in this short series are goals 4, 5 and 10: “quality education,” “gender equality” and “reducing inequality.” These are admirable aims to have at a global level—everyone wants “fairness” in the world—but in the context of engineering in general and the refrigeration sector in particular they have a double-edged meaning.

A chronic shortage of skilled technicians exists in the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump (RAC&HP) markets at all levels, but there is also a greater gender imbalance in RAC&HP than in other engineering sectors. Putting these two shortages together helps bring the path forward into clear view.

In engineering generally only 28% of graduates are women (UNESCO Science Report 2021). I suspect in RAC&HP the percentage is much lower.

If we were able to continue recruiting the same number of men into these graduate engineer jobs but increase the number of women graduates to match, the labor pool would grow by 80%.

However, the current shortage is only an early warning of what’s to come. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) 40% of the workforce will find that their core job skills change within the next five years, and 50% of all employees will need to retrain within the same time period. In addition, the average age of the engineering workforce is now mid-50s so there is going to be a substantial skills exodus and decades of under-recruitment will leave an acute shortage of experienced seniors to take over.

The UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) conducted a global study of engineering capability, examining 99 countries, and came to some surprising conclusions. They identified six “engineering habits of mind”: systems thinking; problem finding; visualizing; improving; creative problem-solving; and adapting, and then scored the countries in six categories of knowledge, labor force, engineering industry, infrastructure, digital infrastructure and safety standards. Although the United States was number one for knowledge it was only 30th for availability of a suitable engineering workforce and placed 82nd out of the 99 for gender imbalance in engineering. In the measurement of safety standards, one of the metrics used is fatal injuries per 100,000 in engineering sectors and the USA was 91st out of the 91 countries for which data was available.

The WEF’s “Future of Jobs Report” published in 2020 lists the top ten skills likely to be required in the labor market by 2025. Five are classed as “problem-solving,” including analytical thinking and innovation; complex problem-solving; critical thinking and analysis; creativity, originality and initiative; and reasoning, problem-solving and ideation. Two others are overtly technical: technology use, monitoring and control; and technology design and programming. The congruence between RAE’s six habits and the WEF key skills is striking but not surprising.

The harsh reality is if you work for a company that is not treating diversity, balance and safety in the workplace as top priorities, there’s a strong chance you will need to find a new employer sooner rather than later. Your current employer risks being squeezed out by the skills shortage and failing to be seen as “the company that everyone wants to work for” by prospective employees. For some companies, no matter what they do, it may be too little, too late but hopefully for others the UN’s equality SDGs will provide the wake up call they need.

Charlie felt that it was time for some retraining.