Energy firms should plan for future workforce needs, says immigration expert

A new report by Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University has found that the UK offshore energy workforce can increase by up to 50% from over 150,000 in 2023 to 225,000 by the end of the decade with new renewable jobs outnumbering oil and gas roles if a successful transition is achieved. The ‘Powering up the Workforce’ report highlights the importance of carefully managing the transition from reliance on oil and gas to renewables in order to retain and support the transfer of thousands of highly skilled oil and gas workers into the renewables energy sector. The message to energy firms is plan ahead to ensure you have the workforce you’ll need. We’ll speak to an immigration lawyer who is working with clients to achieve that goal.

Commenting on its findings Professor Paul de Leeuw, Director of the Robert Gordon University's Energy Transition Institute, said: “This report presents a range of workforce outcomes that could materialise over the coming years. There is a huge prize up for grabs and we want to equip decision makers – whether in government, industry or in individual businesses – with new insight to convert those opportunities into reality.” He talked of ‘a workforce goldilocks zone’ between 2024 and 2028 when the UK supply chain capacity and capability can be sustained, developed, and invested in, so that the transferability of the offshore energy workforce is optimised.

Energy Voice reports on this with a focus on how energy companies can leverage the UK immigration system as they transition from oil and gas to renewables. They say: ‘Due to the current state of the UK labour market, companies may need to source or bring existing talent from outside the UK. Existing and future companies looking to invest, attract and retain global talent in the energy sector need to understand how they can leverage the UK immigration system to fill key positions in operations, engineering, projects, and procurement and supply chain management.’ They go on: ‘The UK immigration system and work options available for personnel in the energy sector can be challenging and complex. It requires understanding and knowledge of the immigration rules that govern the waters in which the work will be undertaken.’ UK waters are the territorial waters stretching 12 nautical miles from the UK coastline, and all internal waters. 

So let’s consider that. Maria Gravelle is an immigration specialist who works with clients in this sector and earlier she joined me by video-link from Edinburgh. I put it to Maria that when it comes to visa routes open to firms, the options available, a lot depends on whether the work is going to be done inside or outside of UK waters:  

Maria Gravelle: “Yes, from an immigration perspective there's certainly a huge difference between a worker who is based on the UK continental shelf, outside 12 nautical miles, versus a worker who is based inside UK territorial waters, i.e. within 12 nautical miles. The big difference is that work that is taking place inside 12 nautical miles is subject to UK immigration control which means that any overseas nationals, so that's a national who's not settled worker or who is not an Irish or a British citizen, they would need some form of permission to work within 12 nautical miles and, depending on the type of work that they're doing, that permission is not always straightforward to obtain. If it's going to be the case that the worker needs a sponsored work visa, then the company who is employing them, or engaging them, in the UK, would need to obtain a licence in order to sponsor that visa for them and these are processes that can take some time, which doesn't always fit with the urgency of some of these projects and the needs to bring people into the UK really quickly.”

Joe Glavina: “The Energy Voice article talks about ‘the effective deployment of personnel on time-critical projects, and the problems companies face if they don’t factor in the necessary lead in time for getting the right permissions. So is it about planning ahead?”

Maria Gravelle: “Definitely planning ahead. So, if we break down those timescales we can see that the sponsor licence application itself is currently taking up to eight weeks to be processed by the Home Office. Now, that's up to eight weeks from the point that you submit the application and in order to get to the point of submission there are also documents that the business would need to prepare. Now, for some businesses those documents will be really easy to pull together, for other businesses that might be slightly more time consuming. So, just the licence process itself accounts for approximately two, potentially even three, months if it has taken a while to get some of these documents together. There are priority services available but the sponsor licence priority service is subject to a daily cap so there are only a certain number of applications that are prioritised each day and, in our experience, it can take a few attempts to actually get a slot on the priority service. Even if you're on the system at nine o'clock in the morning, frantically refreshing the page, it’s like waiting for the worst concert tickets ever. So even though that is there, it's never guaranteed that you would get it exactly when you want to get it. So once the licence is up and running, there is also the process of getting to find certificates of sponsorship if you need them, and then there's the process of applying for the visas for individual workers. Now, that part of the process can again be prioritised, and it can be done really quickly, and we have worked with a lot of energy clients who have really streamlined their approach to that and are able to turn visa applications around really smoothly, and really quickly, but that is because they've got the licence up and running in plenty of time before they need these workers to come to the UK. So our advice would be even if you don't currently need a licence it would be worth considering whether in the long term it's something that you would benefit from. These licences are valid for four years and then you can just renew them, you don't have to apply for a new one every five years, and so having this licence in your arsenal, as it were, would be maybe quite a useful tool for your business in the future if you anticipate that there could be skills shortages coming up that are, maybe, not potentially affecting the projects that you've got ongoing at the moment.”

Joe Glavina: “Finally, Maria, in summary what’s your advice to energy firms? Is it about having a strategy?” 

Maria Gravelle: “Strategy is definitely key and I think that many employers, and certainly many of the HR teams that we work with, if they're not used to sponsorship, and they're not used to working with visa applications, the first look at all of these different immigration rules, and guidance, and Home Office compliance rules, can be quite daunting and I think it can be quite off-putting, but there are a lot of benefits to being able to leverage this successfully and we certainly work with clients who use their sponsor licences every week. One of the main benefits of using a sponsor licence is that you just widen your recruitment pool to effectively the whole world. So, certainly, if you are really struggling to get candidates from the UK job market, having a sponsor licence could really open doors to new candidates, to new specialisms, to new skills as well, that perhaps you've been struggling to find in the UK so it does have a lot of benefits. Equally, sponsored workers in our experience tend to be quite loyal employees. If your presence in the UK, and that of your partner, and that your children, are all linked to your employment, you might be slightly less inclined to resign from your employment than somebody else would be who doesn't have those sorts of constraints. So, when you're sponsoring a worker, certainly under the skilled worker route, you could sponsor them up to five years and during that five-year period, as I say, it doesn't always guarantee that the person will stay for the full duration, but in our experience these workers do tend to be quite loyal, at least during the period of sponsorship and beyond. So, there are definitely a lot of benefits so I would encourage any clients who don't have a sponsor licence, or who don't use their sponsor licences, definitely reach out to us because we can talk you through how to leverage that licence and use it strategically in a way that's not going to interrupt your day-to-day tasks. There's certainly a lot of capability within Pinsent Masons to support with licence management, and you can actually use this tool very effectively to broaden your recruitment pool.”

That report by Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University is called ‘Powering up the Workforce’ and we have put a link to it in the transcript of this programme.

LINKS
- Link to Robert Gorden University’s ‘Powering Up The Workforce’ Report
- Link to Energy Voice article: ‘How energy companies can leverage the UK immigration system as they transition from oil and gas to renewables