STEM manifesto urges swift diversity and retention action

• Aparna Sreevalsan
• 4 July, 2023

A MANIFESTO from the trade union Prospect has been released to assist companies in finding, developing, and retaining STEM-related employees.

In six key areas, including valuing expertise, addressing inequality, keeping talent, investing in every sector and region, fostering the next generation, and fostering international collaboration, it makes recommendations in its Agenda for UK STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths).

Recommendations include:

• Tackling the structural disadvantages that deter women, LGBTQ+, disabled and ethnic minority workers in STEM from thriving.
• Pay systems that reward and incentivise specialist experience and deep expertise, allowing paths of progression that don’t necessarily mean switching to a management role.
• Trade unions working with the government to design and deliver in-work training and lifelong learning, so businesses can ‘grow their own’ STEM specialists.
• Consulting STEM workers so they can contribute insight into what needs to change to attract and retain more talent to the sector.

Prospective members from the STEM fields expressed their worries about the problems affecting the industry.

One said the industry needed to address diversity: “I was the only woman and the only person of colour in my intake, and all the rest of them have mentors, they get the projects that lead to progression, while I go out and tell girls that there’s a great career for them in engineering.”

Mike Clancy, Prospect’s general secretary, said: “As the leading union for science, engineering, and R&D, Prospect is well-placed to lead the conversation on how we meet the workforce challenges of the coming years.

“This manifesto sets out a clear plan for addressing inequality in the sector, and how we can invest smartly to create and retain the skills we need.”

The UK economy is losing £1.5 billion annually due to a shortage of 173,000 STEM professionals, according to research from the Institute for Engineering and Technology.

The government unveiled its International Technology Strategy in March of this year with the goal of making the UK a “tech superpower” by 2030.