HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
From Hard Hats to High Earnings: Scaffolding's Secret Career Appeal
Ever considered a career in scaffolding? Most haven't, but Paul Napper is on a mission to change that perception. As the Head of Training and Education at NASC (National Access and Scaffolding Confederation), Paul joins Bill Banham on the HRchat Show to reveal how this overlooked industry offers diverse career pathways and impressive earning potential.
"There are people I know earning £100,000 a year," Paul explains, highlighting how advanced scaffolders, especially those working in specialized sectors like offshore platforms, can achieve significant financial success. But perhaps more surprising is the range of career options beyond the physical construction work. The industry needs designers, contract managers, health and safety specialists, trainers, and entrepreneurs – creating opportunities for individuals with varied skills and interests.
The timing couldn't be better for exploring this field. With approximately 1,800 weekly vacancies in scaffolding across the UK, there's a genuine skills gap that needs filling. The NASC is actively working to bridge this gap through innovative approaches, including their "talent pack" with VR headsets that allow potential recruits to virtually experience scaffolding work, a talent portal connecting job seekers with employers, and partnerships with educational institutions to develop clear career pathways from entry-level positions through to university qualifications.
What sets scaffolding apart is its global relevance. The UK leads worldwide in scaffolding standards through technical guidance documents like TG20 and TG30. Countries including Australia, Malaysia, Jersey, and even the United States are now looking to adopt these standards, creating international opportunities for UK-trained scaffolding professionals. As major projects like the new Universal Studios theme park in the UK and worldwide construction continue to drive demand, scaffolding represents not just a job, but a career with genuine security and advancement potential.
Whether you're a school leaver, considering a career change, or simply curious about unexpected professional paths, Paul's insights reveal an industry that offers far more than meets the eye. Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit nasc.org.uk to explore how you might build a future in this dynamic field.
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom. And visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and joining me on the show today is my old colleague and friend, someone that I recently reconnected with. We worked together many, many, many years ago, paul Knapper. Paul is the current head of training and education over at NASC, the leading trade body in scaffolding and access in the UK. He's worked in training and education, lloyd's Maritime Academy and conferences in other sectors. He's also a trustee at HMS Unicorn and the Countryside Regeneration Trust. Paul, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Has it really been that long, bill? I mean, it seems like only yesterday that we were chatting around automotive logistics bits and pieces. But yeah, no, great to reconnect and talk about what I'm up to now.
Speaker 2:It has been a while. I've aged a lot. Obviously, you look exactly the same as when we worked together. So, paul, paul, you've worked in training and education across a range of sectors, from maritime to property to to scaffolding. Now you and I also worked together in the publishing sector many years ago. As we've just established. What drew you to the scaffolding and access industry and what excites you most about your role over at NASC?
Speaker 3:So I guess the main thing for me really is about opportunity. It's something which, throughout my career, I've always tried to encourage. You know, more capacity, I guess, in the various different sectors. You know, when I worked for Lloyd's Maritime Academy, for example's all about creating kind of lifelong learning paths within the maritime industry. You know, encouraging people who've been working on ships for 20, 30 years to actually look at a career back on shore, looking at training within that.
Speaker 3:There was something about you know kind of the scaffold scaffolding sector that really drew me to how underappreciated it was as a massively important sector in the first place. But secondly, I guess my kind of experience in in building that opportunity and lifelong learning and creating that, that opportunity within scaffolding is something which I think is is hugely um vital for you know uk economy um in in in general, but also within the construction sector on a global level um, but also more kind of um in terms of, I guess, trying to create a, you know, a viable training um, viable career path for people, whether they're straight out of college or whether it's a second career, whether they've come out of a disadvantaged background or whatever. So I see this as a huge opportunity for me to develop something which has appeal for across the board and really put something in place for the future.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. So let's face it, scaffolding might not be the first career path that people think of, but there's a heck of a lot of opportunity in the field. Uh, it seems like there's lots of construction happening at the moment all over the place. What, what do you think needs to be done to shift public perception and attract new talent?
Speaker 3:so I think I think it's it's um, it's it's a tough one. I think the you know what I'm seeing is that there's a lot of people that see it as last resort, um, as something which, oh, you know my data scaffolder I'm going to be a scaffolder now but actually I think actually it's what I'm looking at now is it's not just scaffolders. You know that people, um, you know, within the industry you've got health and safety managers, you've got contract managers, you've got entrepreneurs, you've got people working in different areas of scaffolding actually not just stop at scaffolders, but I think even those people that do stop at scaffolding, there's people I know earning 100, 100 000 pound a year. You know if you get onto, you know um, an advanced card if you're, you know if you have your own company. Always there is things. If you end up working in a very specific like the offshore sector, you can earn some good money.
Speaker 3:And I think what's interesting is that there is so much opportunity within the industry, not just the scaffolder, but you know various other jobs, as I said, but also within things like the universal studios theme park that's opening up. You know there's jobs there that that you know are opening up for for the industry. But also, what's amazing bill is um I was talking about this the other day um, at a moment there's something like 1800 vacancies per week in scaffolding. So there's the capacity there for people to actually say you know, there's jobs available and at the moment there's a crisis, there's like a skills gap. There's, there's companies that need scaffolders.
Speaker 3:You know, we're trying to encourage people to say look, there is a job here, there is a career path here. You know, and it's not just the dirty, you know, all weather scaffold jobs that people thought of in the past. There's other jobs that are, you know, on the past. There's other jobs that are, you know, on the parallel to that. But at the same time, you can make good money if you go into it. So it's creating that, I guess, opportunity and viability for young people to explore it as a career and as a fun, exciting, possibly lucrative career as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's delve into that a bit more, paul, if you don't mind, specifically around ways that the NASC is working with schools, with colleges and with universities to create clearer pathways into scaffolding, and maybe you can share what's working particularly well at the moment and what are your ambitions for the next 12 to 24 months.
Speaker 3:So I've actually just recruited someone who's starting next week, um who is going to be managing that whole process for me. What we have at the moment we have a thing called a talent pack, and this talent pack essentially is a couple of pop-up banners, some leaflets, but what's really exciting is also a vr headset. Now members of nasc, scaffolding contracting, members of NASC, can hire one of these talent packs for free for two weeks to take with them to a school's or college careers fair and showcase what it's like to be a scaffolder with that VR headset. We've got all this equipment that we're lending out to our members free of charge to actually promote Scaffolding as a career to schools, colleges, further education, higher education and my new team member is going to be proactively pushing that to members and schools and colleges as well. But what we've also got, we've also got something called a talent portal. Now, that talent portal essentially is something that we're marketing through our various events that we do. So we're, uh, we're at uk construction week in a few weeks time. Um, we've got our own event, scafex in september, which we're going to have 3 000 people attend, um huge event that um that we're running. Um, keith lemon's going to be there. Um, sorry, if you remember keith the comedian, he's going to be one of the hosts. Um, you know, we're really promoting it as a career, but the beauty about his talent portal is a website where people can register their interest to be a scaffolder, upload their details. Companies can do the same, they can upload their vacancies and we can join the two proactively.
Speaker 3:We can say to a scaffold contractor look, we've got a scaffolder in your region that's looking for work. You know, there you go and in this case, of practically managing that now with the schools and colleges. You know we have a relationship with some good college providers. We're also talking to a company at the moment that's been looking at creating videos which tie in with the national curriculum, creating videos which tie in with the national curriculum. So they have to show. They show these videos as part of the curriculum and I think they're working with the RAF on one and we're talking with them about doing potentially one on scaffolding which will then be sent to hundreds of colleges around the UK which they can then use as part of their curriculum to show people.
Speaker 3:It's a viable career choice. There is that kind of stuff going on. There's also talk um, about, um, uh, the. At a moment the career path is a um, a very standard um scaffold card that gets you to, you know, to be on a scaffold site. Then you, then you do six months, then you do a part one, another six months to a part two. But also we're now looking at a level four apprenticeship. So hnc, a level five apprenticeship, hnd, and then university apprenticeship.
Speaker 3:And talking to universities and getting them to deliver apprenticeship at university level is really important for us because it shows that actually we're not. We're not limited to, you know, just school and college leavers. We're not limited to, you know, just school and college leavers. We're actually saying why not go to university, why not look at other things like contract management, quantity surveying, you know all the big tech management stuff. You know why stop there.
Speaker 3:So what I want to do is encourage lots and lots of different schools and colleges and providers to actually look at scaffolding, not as just a last resort or anything, but actually we can work with you to create something that's appealing for leaders to say, hey, this is something that, that's that's.
Speaker 3:You know, I can do.
Speaker 3:You know, as long as you're you know, and you know, as long as you're enthusiastic, I guess because we we want people who are like saying you know, this is something that I can actually make my mark in and I think, working with schools, colleges, to actually see that in practice whether it's VR headsets, whether it's going to potentially go into a site see it in action, maybe doing work experience as well it's something that you know.
Speaker 3:My role essentially is to kind of like create that enthusiasm opportunity but at the same time, say you know what? I'm open to ideas. Whatever it takes to build that capacity, whatever it takes to fill those vacancies, whatever it takes to get school leavers, university leavers, graduates, to say why not scaffolding and design contract. There's so many different jobs within that and I think my part of my job now is to open that out to the population and say you know, why not, why not you? You know? So the wider conversation around schools and colleges is making sure that we have that dialogue on a national level. Um, you know, talking to the government, talking to, you know, devolved authorities, local authorities, making sure that you know our members at nasc, who are audited as well as part of our membership standards, making sure that those employers that they employ are competent and trained to understand that we need to be as well which is a fantastic lead-in to my next question.
Speaker 2:Um around around standards, um. So scaffolding and related areas, such as construction, obviously they are heavily, heavily um regulated. They need to be, you know. They have massive health and safety concerns. If, if, if they weren't, if they weren't regulated and the national access to scaffolding confederation is widely recognized for setting safety and technical standards in the scaffolding industry, of course why are these standards, paul, so essential and how do they impact the day-to-day work of member organizations? Thank you.
Speaker 3:So obviously we have the TG20 and the TG30, which are the two main standards that we kind of set. You know, tg30 is the newest one, which is all about system scaffolding, but TG20 is the basic kind of main one Now that all relates to the erection, the build and dismantling of scaffolding and dismantling of scaffolding. And what's interesting about this essentially is that it's one of those standards which is so ingrained now within the scaffolding industry that our members have access to it as part of their membership. But non-members can also purchase the guidance and non-members purchase the guidance and can and non-members purchased guidance and can use that guidance in what we call an e-portal. And that e-portal allows them to put together a compliance, electronic compliance sheet so they can put out all their, all their measurements of scaffolding and it will draw up a compliance sheet for them with an actual diagram, an actual specify, the load bears, the load bearing, calculations, everything. So. So non-members can pay for that separately but members have it as part of their membership now to be a member of nasc. And bearing in mind, we have 320 um scaffolding contractor members which make up 80 percent of the uk scaffolding industry by revenue, right? So we're talking the big commercial scaffolding companies.
Speaker 3:Now they have to be audited every two years. Those audits take place as a desktop audit but also as a site visit. Now part of that audit is they obviously have to correspond to all our guidance and standards. But also 90 of our scaffolders have to have the scissors card. To get the scissors card you have to have gone through a process of training to be a scaffold and getting your card processed. Now we are so committed to this whole process of auditing that we're looking at risk-based auditing Instead of going through this binary auditing process. Now where compliant and non-compliant, we're saying well, you know, we should be auditing by. You know the levels of risk and so on inherent in that member. So we're now looking at a different way of auditing using that. But what's more important, I guess, is that our standards are so, I guess, stringent and welcome and respected.
Speaker 3:That actually now I'm going to Jersey in a few weeks' time. Talk to the government of Jersey about actually training Jersey scaffolders in the standards that we do scissors. We're talking to australia. Australia are now looking at um, uh, you know, using our standard as their standard for scaffolding. We're talking to america because america have no safety standards in scaffolding all right. They literally are no safety standards. So we're going out there to talk to them about safety standards, about, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:We Northern Ireland, you know there's so many countries Malaysia we spoke to Malaysia. Malaysia want 20 training centers Right Now. This is something that Malaysia have said to us. You know we need this in place because we need to. We've got so much construction going on. We need the proper standards, that that we are recognized for nasc and to train those up we need to put our own training program in place. So this is, this has the capacity to be replicated around the globe. Essentially. So there's a huge potential um for not just nasc and obviouslyissors and our members and all that kind of stuff, but also the UK as like a world-leading standard, setting the standards for construction globally, but also setting the standards for scaffolding and replicating that across different countries to make sure that our scaffold is the best in the world.
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Speaker 2:Very good, and you just covered two more questions I had about the internationalization of what you guys are doing, so very good, and you just covered. Uh, two more questions I had about the internationalization of what you guys are doing, so very good. In that case, two more questions for you before we, before we wrap up. Uh, today, uh, given everything you've said so far in one minute or less, paul because I like to challenge my guests sometimes uh, why should listeners consider a a career in?
Speaker 3:scaffolding. I think the main thing really really is like it's not just scaffolding, you know, there's scaffolding design, there's contract management, there's health and safety management, there's entrepreneurship. Our president at the moment, for example, is not a scaffolder but he built up a scaffolding company from scratch and that company is now worth bringing in millions of pounds of revenue because he recognized actually scaffolding is a really exciting industry to be in and just by creating that company and owning that company he's, you know, brought in, he's employed lots of people, he's brought in business and I think essentially it's scaffolding is one of those areas like, um, it is what you make of it. You know, if you want to be a contract manager, you want to be helping safety, you want to be a trainer, want to be. If you want to be a contract manager, you want to be helping safety, you want to be a trainer, want to be an instructor, you want to be, you know, bringing people into the industry. You can do it. You can do whatever you want to because there are at the moment it's almost like a startup scaffolding. In my opinion. It's like a startup in that you can say you know what, I'm going to create something and I'm going to change the way we do it. And although we have standards in place, you know, quite strict in terms of the technical standards and so on, the job roles are so diverse, what you can do, you know we're welcoming different approaches to different things, you know. But we're also looking at things like, you know, proper business management, contract management, design, health and safety. You know procurement, sales. You know it's just a different sector, but the point is, it's scaffolding itself.
Speaker 3:The uk is, in my opinion, the leading country in terms of what scaffolding looks like. And I think if you're trained in the scissors, you know standard and you can work around the world and you can. You know you can do scaffolding wherever you want to. And, uh, you know, essentially there's lots of money to be made as well, and I think that's another. That's another thing as well. You know you've got people, as I said before, working on the offshore platforms, very complicated platforms, you know. You know quite harsh conditions at times. But actually if you do it for five, ten years, you've made quite a bit of money and I think then you can say, right, okay, now I'm going to go into contract management, now I'm going to do scaffold design, you know. So it's it's. Have I spoken more than a minute? I don't know.
Speaker 3:But anyway, the um, you know, the point I'm trying to make is it's such an exciting sector to get involved in um and there's so many. There's such a wide and diverse um opportunities in terms of job types, countries, areas. You know, even being just an entrepreneur and just opening up your own company and saying I'm going to win some business, I'm going to employ some scaffolders, let's do some work Because, as I said, the work is there. Universal Studios, you know the new theme park they're looking for scaffolders. All the work being. You know going theme park they're looking for scaffolders. Um, all the all the work being. You know. Going on in um, in for the world cup, you know they're looking scaffolders, you know. So there's so much opportunity there and I think people need. If people knew about it, I think they'll be saying I want to be a scaffolder because you know there is the work there. So that's that's why. That's why I think people should want to be a scaffolding okay, wonderful, thank you.
Speaker 2:Um, you failed miserably at keeping under 60 seconds. You can't bottle that enthusiasm, and what I know that is um, there's an amazing ladder, a career ladder for those who want to get into the scaffolding industries. Okay, and just finally for today, paul, how can folks connect with you? You and I have been connected for 15 plus years, but how can folks connect with you on linkedin email, wherever else? And, of course, how can they learn more about?
Speaker 3:the national. So obviously I'm on linkedin. Paul napper, n-a-p-p-e-r. Um. There's only one of me that works at nasc, at NASC, the website NASCorguk or scissorsorguk. I mean, there's also scaffolding careers. Alloneworkcom is our talent portal, but all the information about NASC and scissors is on those two websites. I'm always open to connections on LinkedIn and you'll find me on there. I'm always out and about as well. So if anyone wants to meet me for coffee, you know, please feel free. And and yeah, you know, as I said, I'm open to any ideas. If anyone has any, if anyone has any ideas from different industries they want to share, or or if I can help them with ideas from scaffold industry, drop me a line.
Speaker 2:Very good. Well, that just leaves me to say for today, mr Knapper, my friend, lovely catching up with you. Thank you very much for being my guest. Thank you, bill, see you later and listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
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