Change of culture needed to staff the battery industry

Delegates to the Australian Battery Day conference have heard that the dearth of mechanical engineers taking up options in the industry has reached a low point. It was now a matter of changing the culture. The Queensland University forum was told by QUT Faculty of Engineering lecturer Dr Veronica Gray that current engineering students and graduates had different values than other generations. There were idiosyncratic trends among student sectors both complicating graduate availability and impacting diversity and inclusion rates said Dr Gray. “Unfortunately in terms of gender diversity, mechanical engineering has gone backwards from 31.1 percent to 12.9 percent. 50 percent of our women who graduate from engineering quit the engineering sector in the first five years,” said Dr Gray. “Part of it is we’re not building up enough critical mass to change the attitude. QUT Engineering Lecturer Dr Veronica Gray “This isn't mechanical as in overalls and grease and grit and grind. It's mechanical as in clean and green and an office and all of a sudden all the issues that would normally be a barrier, drop. “Also our young people are very concerned about what other people think. So if we can get into that mindset and say either don't worry about what other people think or become part of what other people think.” Undergraduates were influenced more by social media than their parents which was the case in previous generations, Dr Gray said. “I see these students every day and I can tell you something very important, these students are not the same,” she said. “What we're looking at is young people who have grown up with full employment. So they have options, young people that have grown up with exposure to new jobs that never existed. “So the social media influences and all those new jobs coming out. But here's the thing, back in our day when you left school and went home, the biggest cultural exposure you had was to your parents.” Building, or rebuilding, a culture was important to both training and retaining engineers said Dr Gray who referred to a project she’s done with the Australian Army’s First Artillery Regiment. “One project we did last year, we took away a diesel generator from powering a howitzer. We now power it with solar panels, batteries. Basically what happens is over their engineering. We build culture by doing that year-long project. “3.3 percent of engineers today in Australia are working defence industries. 35 percent of engineers that come through EIS (the QUT project) work for defence. “When we talk about culture, they talk about their project with their friends and suddenly you get that reach. And so what we're looking at is extending that currently to critical minerals or mining. “So we're going to try and change the game by creating that culture. Finding those people and directing them to where they can find a home and a place with that knowledge that we build over you.”

Change of culture needed to staff the battery industry

Industry Queensland

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