Where have all the Service Engineers Gone?

Welcome to my first blog (of many), these views are those of someone fresh in a new engineering market and tasked with finding Medical / Scientific Field Service Engineers and it has left me with  the nagging question, where have all the engineers gone?

Now this is a loose question, one I will try and clarify. There seems to be a real lack of engineers currently servicing Medical Devices or Scientific and Laboratory equipment. Of course there are some, but often in a small team of 2 or 3 covering the whole of the UK and it seems that in some areas (like Scientific) in particular there is a talent shortage.

So where have they all gone?

Is it because Engineers seem to be easy targets when restructuring comes around, perhaps it is too easy to make them each cover a bigger territory and reduce numbers.

There also seems a dearth in people progressing from education. Is this because there are more ‘glamorous’ options available say mechanical/electronic design with perceived better pay and hours.

When there are SLA’s to be kept and as Service Engineers offer the most regular point of contact for the customers it seems like companies are going along the wrong path by scrimping on this. Perhaps even being short sighted, and refusing to invest the money in training and keeping their service staff.

Naturally basic economics dictate that you will always try and offer the same service for less money (in this case engineers) but perhaps years of this has lead to a problem with a shortage of qualified candidates that all companies are suffering at the moment.

This blog did pose more questions than answers, I will attempt to address some of these points in further detail in the future.